The Seven Principles of Man
by
Annie Besant
Revised and corrected edition
1909
The Theosophical Publishing Society,
161 New Bond Street, W., London, England
PREFACE
Few words are needed in sending this little book out into the world.
It is the first of a series of Manuals designed to meet the public
demand a simple exposition of Theosophical teachings. Some have
complained that our literature is at once too abstruse, too technical,
and too expensive for the ordinary reader, and it is our hope that the
present series may succeed in supplying what is a very real want.
Theosophy is not only for the learned; it is for all. It may be that
among those who in these little books catch their first glimpse of its
teachings, there may be a few who will be led by them to penetrate
more deeply into its philosophy, its science, and its religion, facing
its abstruser problems with the student's zeal and the neophyte's
ardour. But these Manuals are not written for the eager student
whom no initial difficulties can daunt; they are written for the busy
men and women of the work-a-day world and seek to make plain
some of the great truths that render life easier to bear and death
easier to face. Written by servants of the Masters who are the Elder
Brothers of our race, they can have no other object than to serve our
fellowmen.
ANNIE BESANT
2
Inquirers attracted to Theosophy by its central doctrine
of the brotherhood of man, and by the hopes which it holds out of
wider knowledge and of spiritual growth, are apt to be repelled
when they make their first attempt to come into closer acquaintance
with it, by the, to them, strange and puzzling names which flow
glibly from the lips of Theosophists in conference assembled.They
hear a tangle of Âtma-Buddhi, Kâma-Manas, Triad, Devachan, and
what not, and feel at once that for them Theosophy is far too
abstruse a study. Yet they might have become very good
Theosophists, had not their initial enthusiasm been quenched with
the douche of Sanskrit terms. In the present manual the smoking
flax shall be more tenderly treated, and but few Sanskrit names
shall be flung in the face of the enquirer. As a matter of fact, the use
of these terms has become general among Theosophists because the
English language has no equivalents for them, and a long and
clumsy sentence has to be used in their stead if the idea is to be
conveyed at all. The initial trouble of learning the names has been
preferred to the continued trouble of using roundabout descriptive
phrases – “Kâma”, for instance, being shorter and more precise
than “the passional and emotional part of our nature”. [Page 2]
Man according to the Theosophical teaching is a
sevenfold being, or, in the usual phrase, has a septenary
constitution. Putting it in another way, man’s nature has seven
aspects, may be studied from seven different points of view, is
composed of seven principles. The clearest and best way of all in
which to think of man is to regard him as one, the Spirit or True
Self; this belongs to the highest region of the universe, and is
universal, the same for all; it is a ray of God, a spark from the
divine fire. This is to become an individual, reflecting the divine
perfection, a son that grows into the likeness of his father. For this
purpose the Spirit, or true Self, is clothed in garment after garment,
each garment belonging to a definite region of the universe, and
enabling the Self to come into contact with that region, gain
knowledge of it, and work in it. It thus gains experience, and all its
latent potentialities are gradually drawn out into active powers.
These garments, or sheaths, are distinguishable from each other
both theoretically and practically. If a man be looked at
clairvoyantly each is distinguishable by the eye, and they are
separable each from each either during physical life or at death,
according to the nature of any particular sheath. Whatever words
3
may be used, the fact remains the same – that he is essentially
sevenfold, an evolving being, part of whose nature has already been
manifested, part remaining latent at present, so far as the vast
majority of humankind is concerned. Man’s consciousness is able
to function through as many of these aspects as have been already
evolved in him into activity.
This evolution, during the present cycle of human
development, takes place on five out of seven planes of [Page 3 ]
nature. The two higher planes – the sixth and seventh – will not be
reached, save in the most exceptional cases, by men of this
humanity in the present cycle, and they may therefore be left out of
sight for our present purpose.As, however, some confusion has
arisen as to the seven planes through differences of nomenclature,
two diagrams are given at the end of this treatise showing the seven
planes as they exist in our division of the universe, in
correspondence with the vaster planes of the universe as a whole,
and also the subdivision of the five into seven, as they are
represented in some of our literature . A“plane” is merely a
condition, a stage, a state; so that we might describe man as fitted
by his nature, when that nature is fully developed, to exist
consciously in seven different conditions, or seven different stages,
in seven different states; or technically, on seven different planes of
being. To take an easily verified illustration: a man may be
conscious on the physical plane, that is, in his physical body,
feeling hunger and thirst, and pain of a blow or cut. But let the man
be a soldier in the heat of battle, and his consciousness will be
centred in his passions and emotions, and he may suffer a wound
without knowing it, his consciousness being away from the
physical plane and acting on the plane of passions and emotions:
when the excitement is over, consciousness will pass back to the
physical, and he will “feel” the pain of his wound. Let the man be a
philosopher, and as he ponders over some knotty problem he will
lose all consciousness of bodily wants, of emotions, of love and
hatred; his consciousness will have passed to the plane of intellect,
he will be “abstracted”, i.e.., drawn away from considerations
pertaining to his bodily life, and fixed on the plane [Page 4 ] of
thought. Thus may a man live on these several planes, in these
several conditions, one part or another of his nature being thrown
into activity at any given time; and an understanding of what man
is, of his nature, his powers, his possibilities, will be reached more
easily and assimilated more usefully if he is studied along these
4
clearly defined lines, that if he be left without analysis, a mere
confused bundle of qualities and states.
It has also been found convenient, having regard to
man’s mortal and immortal life, to put these seven principles into
two groups – one containing the three higher principles and
therefore called the Triad, the other containing the four lower, and
therefore called the Quaternary. The Triad is the deathless part of
man’s nature, the “spirit” and soul of Christian terminology; the
Quaternary is the mortal part, the “body”, of Christianity.This
division into body, soul and spirit is used by St. Paul, and is
recognised in all careful Christian philosophy, although generally
ignored by the mass of Christian people. In ordinary parlance soul
and body make up the man, and the words soul and spirit are used
interchangeably, with much confusion of thought as the result.This
looseness is fatal to any clear view of the constitution of man, and
the Theosophist may well appeal to the Christian philosopher as
against the causal Christian non-thinker if it be urged that he is
making distinctions difficult to be grasped. No philosophy worthy
of the name can be stated even in the most elementary fashion
without making some demand on the intelligence and the attention
of the would be learner, and carefulness in the use of terms is a
condition of all knowledge.[Page 5]
PRINCIPLE
1
THE DENSE PHYSICAL BODY
The dense physical body of man is called the first of
his seven principles, as it is certainly the most obvious. Built of
material molecules, in the generally accepted sense of the term –
with its five organs of sensation - the five senses - its organs of
locomotion, its brain and nervous system, its apparatus for carrying
on the various functions necessary for its continued existence, there
is little to be said about this physical body in so slight a sketch as
this of the constitution of man . Western science is almost ready to
accept the Theosophical view that the human organism consists of
innumerable “lives”, which build up the cells. H.P.Blavatsky says
on this: “Science has never yet gone so far as to assert with the
Occult doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants,
and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings
[bacteria, etc.]: which, with the exception of the larger species, no
microscope can detect ….The physical and chemical constituents of
all being found to be identical, chemical science may well say that
5
there is no difference between the matter which composes the ox
and that which forms the man. But the Occult doctrine is far more
explicit. It says: Not only the chemical compounds are the same,
but the same infinitesimal invisible lives compose the atoms of the
bodies of the mountain and the daisy, of man and the ant, of the
elephant and [Page 6 ] of the tree which shelters him from the sun.
Each particle – whether you call it organic or inorganic – is a life.
Every atom and molecule in the universe is both life-giving and
death-giving to such forms (Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 281, new
edition). The microbes thus “build up the material body and its
cells”, under the constructive energy of vitality – a phrase that will
be explained when we come to deal with “life”, as the Third
Principle, and with these microbes as part of it. When the “life” is
no longer supplied the microbes “are left to run riot as destructive
agents”, and they break up and disintegrate the cells which they
built, and so the body goes to pieces.
The purely physical consciousness is the consciousness
of the cells and the molecules. The selective action of the cells,
taking from the blood what they need, rejecting what they do not
need, is an instance of this self consciousness. The process goes on
without the help of our consciousness or volition. Again that which
is called by physiologists unconscious memory is the memory of
the physical consciousness, unconscious to us indeed, until we have
learned to transfer our brain consciousness there. What we feel is
not what the cells feel. The pain of a wound is felt by the brainconsciousness, acting, as before said, on the physical plane; but the
consciousness of the molecule, as of the aggregation of molecules
we call cells, leads it to hurry to the repair of the damaged tissues –
actions of which the brain is unconscious – and its memory makes
it repeat the same act again and again, even when it has become
unnecessary. Hence cicatrices on wounds, scars, callosities, etc.
The student may find many details on this subject in physiological
treatises.[Page
7]
The death of the dense physical body occurs when the withdrawal
of the controlling life-energy leaves the microbes to go their own
way, and the many lives, no longer co-ordinated, separate from
each other and scatter the particles of the cells of “the man of dust”,
and what we call decay sets in. The body becomes a whirlpool of
unrestrained, unregulated lives, and its form, which resulted from
their correlation, is destroyed by their exuberant individual energy.
6
Death is but an aspect of life, and the destruction of one material
form is but a prelude to building up of another.[Page 8]
PRINCIPLE
-2THE ETHERIC DOUBLE
The Linga Sharira , the astral body, the ethereal body,
the fluidic body, the double, the wraith, the doppelgänger, the astral
man – such are a few of the many names which have been given to
the second principle in man’s constitution. The best name is the
Etheric Double, because this term designates the second principle
only, suggesting its constitution and appearance: whereas the other
names have been used somewhat generally to describe bodies
formed of some more subtle matter than that which affects our
physical senses, without regard to the question whether other
principles were or were not involved in their construction. I shall
therefore use this name throughout.
The etheric double is formed of matter rarer or more
subtle than that which is perceptible to our five senses, but still
matter belonging to the physical plane, to which its functioning is
confined. It is the state of physical matter which is just beyond our
“solid , liquid and gas”, which form the dense portions of the
physical plane.
This etheric double is the exact double or counterpart
of the dense physical body to which it belongs, and is separable
from it, although unable to go very far away therefrom. In normal
healthy human beings the separation is a matter of difficulty, but in
persons [Page 9] known as physical or materialising mediums, the
ethereal double slips out without any great effort. When separated
from the dense body it is visible to the clairvoyant as an exact
replica thereof, united to it by a slender thread. So close is the
physical union between the two that an injury inflicted on the
etheric double appears as a lesion on the dense body, a fact known
under the name of repercussion. A. d’Assier, in his well known
work – translated by Colonel Olcott, the President-Founder of the
Theosophical Society, under the title of Posthumous Humanity –
gives a number of cases (see p. 51-57) in which this repercussion
took place.
Separation of the etheric double from the dense body is
generally accompanied by a considerable decrease in vitality in the
latter, the double becoming more vitalised as the energy in the
dense body diminishes. Colonel Olcott says (page 63):
7
“ When the double is projected by a trained
expert, even the body seems torpid, and the mind in a
‘brown study’ or dazed state; the eyes are lifeless in
expression, the heart and lung actions feeble, and often
the temperature much lowered. It is very dangerous to
make any sudden noise or burst into the room, under
such circumstances; for the double, being by
instantaneous reaction drawn back into the body, the
heart convulsively contracts, and death may even be
caused.”
In the case of Emilie Sagée (quoted on page 62-65) the
girl was noticed to look pale and exhausted when the double was
visible: “the more distinct the double and more material in
appearance, the really material person was effectively wearied,
suffering and languid; when on the contrary, the appearance of the
[Page 10] double weakened, the patient was seen to recover
strength.”This phenomenon is perfectly intelligible to the
Theosophical student, who knows that the etheric double is the
vehicle of the life-principle, or vitality, in the physical body, and
that its partial withdrawal must therefore diminish the energy, with
which this principle plays on the denser molecules. Clairvoyants,
such as the Seeress of Prevorst, state that they can see the ethereal
arm or leg attached to a body from which the dense limb has been
amputated, and D’Assier remarks on this: “Whilst I was absorbed in physiological
studies, I was often arrested by a singular fact. It
sometimes happens that a person who has lost an arm
or leg experiences certain sensations at the extremities
of the fingers and toes. Physiologists explain this
anomaly by postulating in the patient an inversion of
sensitiveness or of recollection, which makes him
locate in the hand or the foot the sensation with which
the nerve of the stump is alone affected …I confess that
these explanations seemed to me laboured and have
never satisfied me. When I studied the problem of the
duplication of man, the question of amputations
recurred to my mind, and I asked myself if it was not
more simple and logical to attribute the anomaly of
which I have spoken to the doubling of the human
8
body, which by its fluid nature can escape amputation”
(loc. Cit., p. 103-104) .
The etheric double plays a great part in spiritualistic
phenomena. Here again the clairvoyant can help us. A clairvoyant
can see the etheric double oozing out of the left side of the medium,
and it is this which often appears as the “materialised spirit,” easily
moulded into various shapes by the thought-currents of the sitters,
and gaining strength and vitality as the medium sinks into a deep
trance. The Countess Wachtmeister, who is clairvoyant, says she
has seen the same [Page 11] “spirit” recognised as that of a near
relative or friend by different sitters, each of whom saw it
according to his expectations, while to her own eyes it was the
mere double of the medium.So again, H.P.Blavatsky told me that
when she was at the Eddy homestead, watching the remarkable
series of phenomena there produced, she deliberately moulded the
“spirit” that appeared into the likenesses of persons known to
herself and to no one else present, and the other sitters saw the
types which she produced by her own will-power, moulding the
plastic
matter
of
the
medium’s
etheric
double.
Many of the movements of objects that occur at such séances, and
at other times, without visible contact, are due to the action of the
etheric double, and the student can learn how to produce such
phenomena at will. They are trivial enough: the mere putting out of
the etheric hand is no more important than the putting out of the
dense counterpart, and neither more or less miraculous. Some
persons produce such phenomena unconsciously, mere aimless
overturnings of objects, making of noises, and so on: they have no
control over their etheric double, and it just blunders about in their
near neighbourhood, like a baby trying to walk.For the etheric
double, like the dense body, has only a diffused consciousness
belonging to its parts, and has no mentality. Nor does it readily
serve as a medium of mentality, when disjoined from the dense
counterpart.
This leads to and interesting point. The centres of sensation are
located in the fourth principle, which may be said to form a bridge
between the physical organs and the mental perceptions;
impressions from [Page 12] the physical universe impinge on the
material molecules of the dense physical body, setting in vibration
9
the constituent cells of the organs of sensations, or our “senses”.
These vibrations, in their turn, set in motion the finer material
molecules of the etheric double, in the corresponding sense organs
of its finer matter. From these vibrations pass to the astral body, or
fourth principle, presently to be considered, wherein are the
corresponding centres of sensation.From these vibrations are again
propagated into the yet rarer matter of the lower mental plane,
whence they are reflected back until, reaching the material
molecules of the cerebral hemispheres, they become our “brain
consciousness”. This correlated and unconscious succession is
necessary for the normal action of consciousness as we know it. In
sleep and in trance, natural or induced, the first two and the last
stages are generally omitted, and the impressions start from and
return to the astral plane, and thus make no trace on the brain
memory; but the natural or trained psychic, the clairvoyant who
does not need trance for the exercise of his powers, is able to
transfer his consciousness from the physical to the astral plane
without losing grip thereof, and can impress the brain-memory
with knowledge gained on the astral plane, so retaining it for use.
Death means for the etheric double just what it means
for the dense physical body, the breaking up of its constituent parts,
the dissipation of its molecules. The vehicle of the vitality that
animates the bodily organism as a whole, it oozes forth from the
body when the death hour comes, and is seen by the clairvoyant as
a violet light, or violet form, hovering over the dying person, still
attached to the physical body by [Page 13] the slender thread
before spoken of. When the thread snaps, the last breath has
quivered outwards, and the bystanders whisper “He is dead”.
The etheric double, being of physical matter, remains in the
neighbourhood of the corpse, and is the “wraith”, or “apparition”,
or “phantom”, sometimes seen at the moment of death and
afterwards by persons near the place where the death has occurred.
It disintegrates slowly pari passu with its dense counterpart, and its
remnants are seen by sensitives in cemeteries and church yards as
violet lights hovering over graves. Here is one of the reasons which
render cremation preferable to burial as a mode of disposing of the
physical enveloped of man; the fire dissipates in a few hours the
molecules which would otherwise be set free only in the slow
course of gradual putrefaction, and thus quickly restores to their
10
own plane the dense and etheric materials, ready for use once more
in the building up of new forms. [Page 14]
PRINCIPLE
-3PRÂNA, THE LIFE
All universes, all worlds, all men, all brutes, all
vegetables, all minerals, all molecules and atoms, all that is, are
plunged in a great ocean of life, life eternal, life infinite, life
incapable of increase or diminution. The universe is only life in
manifestation, life made objective, life differentiated. Now each
organism, whether minute as a molecule or vast as a universe, may
be thought of as appropriating to itself somewhat of life, of
embodying, in itself as its own life some of this universal life .
Figure a living sponge, stretching itself out in the water which
bathes it, envelops it, permeates it; there is water, still the ocean,
circulating in every passage, filling every pore; but we may think of
the ocean outside the sponge, or of part of the ocean, appropriated
by the sponge, distinguishing them in thought if we want to make
statements about each severally.So each organism is a sponge
bathed in the ocean of life universal, and containing within itself
some of that ocean as its own breath of life. In Theosophy we
distinguish this appropriated life under the name Prâna, breath, and
call it the third principle in man’s constitution.
To speak quite accurately, the “breath of life” – that which the
Hebrews termed Nephesh, or the breath of life breathed into the
nostrils of Adam – is not Prâna only, but Prâna and the fourth
principle conjoined. [Page 15] It is these two together that make
the “vital spark” (Secret Doctrine, vol. 1., page 262), and that are
the “breath of life in man, as in beast or insect, or physical, material
life” (Secret Doctrine, vol. 1., note to page 263).It is “the breath of
animal life in man – the breath of life instinctual in the animal”
(Secret Doctrine, vol. 1., diagram page 262) . But just now we are
concerned with Prâna only, with vitality as the animating principle
in all animal and human bodies. Of this life the etheric double is the
vehicle, acting, so to say, as means of communication, as bridge,
between Prâna and the dense body.
Prâna is explained in the Secret Doctrine as having for
its lowest subdivision the microbes of science; these are the
“invisible lives” that build up the physical cells (se ante, page 8-9);
these are the “countless myriads of lives” that build the “tabernacle
11
of clay”, the physical bodies (Secret Doctrine vol. 1, page 245).
“Science, dimly perceiving the truth, may find bacteria and other
infinitesimals in the human body, and see in them only, occasional
and abnormal visitors to which diseases are attributed . Occultism –
which discerns a life in every atom and molecule, whether in a
mineral or human body, in air, fire, or water – affirms that our
whole body is built of such lives; the smallest bacterium under the
microscope being to them a comparative size like an elephant to the
tiniest infusoria” (ibid., p. 245). The “fiery lives” are the controllers
and directors of these microbes, these invisible lives, and
“indirectly” build, i.e., build by controlling and directing the
microbes, the immediate builders, supplying the latter with what is
necessary, acting as the life of these lives; the “fiery lives” the
synthesis, the essence, of Prâna, are the “vital constructive energy”
that enables the [Page 16] microbes to build the physical cells. One
of the archaic commentaries sums up the matter in stately and
luminous phrases: “The worlds, to the profane, are built up of the
known elements. To the conception of an Arhat, these elements are
themselves collectively a divine life; distributively, on the plane of
manifestations, the numberless and countless crores – ( a crore is
ten millions) – of lives. Fire alone is ONE, on the plane of the One
Reality; on that of manifested, hence illusive, being, its particles are
fiery lives which live and have their being at the expense of every
other life that they consume. Therefore they are named the
Devourers….Every visible thing in this universe was built by such
lives, from conscious and divine primordial man, down to the
unconscious agents that construct matter…..From the One Life,
formless and uncreate, proceeds the universe of lives (Secret
Doctrine, Vol. I, page 269). As in the universe, so in man, and all
these countless lives, all this constructive vitality, all this is
summed up by the Theosophist as Prâna .[Page 17]
PRINCIPLE
-4THE DESIRE BODY
In building up our man we have now reached the
principle sometimes described as the animal soul, in Theosophical
parlance Kâma Rûpa, or the desire-body. It belongs to in
constitution, and functions on, the second or astral plane. It
includes the whole body of appetites, passions, emotions, and
desires which come under the head of instincts, sensations, feelings
and emotions, in our Western psychological classification, and are
12
dealt with as a subdivision of mind. In Western psychology mind is
divided – by the modern school – into three main groups, feelings,
will, intellect. Feelings are again divided into sensations and
emotions , and these are divided and subdivided under numerous
heads. Kâma, or desire, includes the whole group of “feelings”, and
might be described as our passional and emotional nature. All
animal needs, such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, come under it;
all passions, such as love (in its lower sense), hatred, envy,
jealousy. It is the desire for sentient experience, for experience of
material joys – “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride
of life”. This principle is the most material in our nature, it is the
one that binds us fast to earthly life. “It is not molecularly
constituted matter, least of all the human body, Sthula Sharîra, that
is the grossest of all our ‘principles’ but verily the middle principle,
the real animal centre; whereas our body is [Page 18] but its shell,
the irresponsible factor and medium through which the beast in us
acts all its life” ( Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 280-81).
United to the lower part of Manas, the mind, as KâmaManas, it becomes the normal human brain-intelligence, and that
aspect of it will be dealt with presently. Considered by itself, it
remains the brute in us, the “ape and tiger” of Tennyson, the force
which most avails to keep us bound to earth and to stifle in us all
higher longings by the illusions of sense.
Kâma joined to Prâna is, as we have seen, the “breath
of life,” the vital sentient principle spread over every particle of the
body. It is, therefore, the seat of sensation, that which enables the
organs of sensation to function. We have already noted that the
physical organs of sense, the bodily instruments that come into
immediate contact with the external world, are related to the organs
of sensation in the etheric double (ante p. 14). But these organs
would be incapable of functioning did not Prâna make them vibrant
with activity, and their vibrations would remain vibrations only,
motion on the material plane of the physical body, did not Kâma,
the principle of sensation translate the vibration into feeling.
Feeling indeed, is consciousness on the kâmic plane, and when a
man is under the dominion of a sensation or a passion, the
Theosophist speaks of him as on the kâmic plane, meaning thereby
that his consciousness is functioning on that plane.For instance, a
tree may reflect rays of light, that is, ethereal vibrations, and these
vibrations striking on the outer eye will set up vibrations in the
physical nerve-cells; these will be propagated as vibrations to the
13
physical and on to the astral centres, but [Page 19] there is no sight
of the tree until the seat of the sensation is reached, and Kâma
enables us to perceive.
Matter of the astral plane – including that called
elemental essence – is the material of which the desire-body is
composed, and it is the peculiar properties of this matter which
enable it to serve as the sheath in which the Self can gain
experience of sensation. (The constitution of the elemental essence
would lead us too far from an elementary treatise). The desire–
body, or astral body, as it is often called, has the form of a mere
cloudy mass during the earlier stages of evolution, and is incapable
of serving as an independent vehicle of consciousness. During deep
sleep it escapes from the physical body, but remains near it, and the
mind within it is almost as much asleep as the body. It is,
however, liable to be affected by forces of the astral plane akin to
its own constitution, and gives rise to dreams of a sensuous kind.In
a man of average intellectual development the desire-body has
become more highly organised, and when separated from the
physical body is seen to resemble it is outline and features; even
then, however, it is not conscious of its surroundings on the astral
plane, but encloses the mind as a shell, within which the mind may
actively function, while not yet able to use it as an independent
vehicle of consciousness. Only in the highly evolved man does the
desire-body become thoroughly organised and vitalised, as much
the vehicle of consciousness on the astral plane as the physical
body is on the physical plane.
After death, the higher part of man dwells for awhile in
the desire-body, the length of its stay depending on the comparative
grossness or delicacy of its constituents. When the man escapes
from it, it persists for a time as [Page 20] a “shell” and when the
departed entity is of a low type, and during earth life infused such
mentality as it possessed into the passional nature, some of this
remains entangled with the shell. It then possesses consciousness of
a very low order, has brute cunning, is without conscience – an
altogether objectionable entity, often spoken of as a “spook.” It
strays about, attracted to all places in which animal desires are
encouraged and satisfied, and is drawn into the currents of those
whose animal passions are strong and unbridled. Mediums of low
type inevitably attract these eminently undesirable visitors, whose
fading vitality is reinforced in their séance rooms, who catch astral
reflections, and play the part of “disembodied spirits” of a low
14
order. Nor is this all; if at such a séance there be present some man
or woman of correspondingly low development, the spook will be
attracted to that person, and may attach itself to him or to her, and
thus may be set up currents between the desire-body of the living
person and the dying desire-body of the dead person, generating
results of the most deplorable kind.
The longer or shorter persistence of the desire-body as
a shell or a spook depends on the greater or less development of the
animal and passional nature in the dying personality. If during
earth-life the animal nature was indulged and allowed to run riot, if
the intellectual and spiritual parts of man were neglected or stifled,
then, as the life-currents were set strongly in the direction of
passion, the desire-body will persist for a long period after the body
of the person is dead. Or again, if earth-life has been suddenly cut
short by accident or by suicide, the link between Kâma and Prâna
will not be easily broken, and the desire-body [Page 21] will be
strongly vivified. If, on the other hand, desire has been conquered
and bridled during earth-life, if it has been purified and trained into
subservience to man’s higher nature, then there is but little to
energise the desire-body and it will quickly disintegrate and
dissolve away.
There remains one other fate, terrible in its
possibilities, which may befall the fourth principle, but it cannot be
clearly understood until the fifth principle has been dealt
with.[Page 22]
THE QUATERNARY, OR FOUR LOWER
PRINCIPLES
Diagram of the Quaternary; transitory and mortal; see
Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 262 [The etheric double is here
named the Linga Sharira, a name now discarded in consequence of
the confusion caused by employing a well-known term in Hindu
philosophy in an entirely new sense. Before her departure H.P.B.
urged her pupils to reform the terminology, which had been too
carelessly put together, and we
are trying to carry out her
wish.]
We have thus
studied man, as to his lower
nature, and have reached the
point in his path of evolution
to [Page 23] which he is
15
accompanied by the brute. The quaternary, regarded alone, ere it is
affected by contact with the mind, is merely a lower animal; it
awaits the coming of the mind to make it man. Theosophy teaches
that through past ages man was thus slowly built up, stage by stage,
principle by principle, until he stood as a quaternary, brooded over
but not in contact with the Spirit, waiting for that mind which could
alone enable him to progress farther, and to come into conscious
union with the Spirit, so fulfilling the very object of his being.This
aeonian evolution, in its slow progression, is hurried through in the
personal evolution of each human being, each principle which was
in the course of ages successively evolved in man on earth,
appearing as part of the constitution of each man at the point of
evolution reached at any given time, the remaining principles being
latent, awaiting their gradual manifestation. The evolution of the
quaternary until it reached the point at which further progress was
impossible without mind, is told in eloquent sentences in the
archaic stanzas on which the Secret Doctrine of H.P. Blavatsky is
based (breath is, the Spirit, for which the human tabernacle is to be
built; the gross body is the dense physical body; the spirit of life is
Prâna; the mirror of its body is the etheric double; the vehicle of
desires
is
Kâma):
“The Breath needed a form; the Fathers gave it. The Breath needed
a gross body; the Earth moulded it; The Breath needed the Spirit of
Life; the Solar Lhas breathed into it its form. The Breath needed a
Mirror of its Body; ‘We gave it our own’, said the Dhyânis. The
Breath needed a Vehicle of Desires; ‘It has it’, said the Drainer of
Waters. But Breath needs a Mind to embrace the Universe; ‘We
[Page 24] cannot give that, ‘said the fathers, ‘I never had it ,‘ said
the Spirit of the Earth. ‘The form would be consumed were I to
give it mine,’ said the Great Fire ….Man remained an empty
senseless Bhûta” (phantom).
And so is the personal man without mind. The
quaternary alone is not man, the Thinker, and it is as Thinker that
man
is
really
man.
Yet at this point let the student pause, and reflect over the human
constitution, so far as he has gone. For this quaternary is the mortal
part of man, and is distinguished by Theosophy as the personality.
It needs to be very clearly and definitely realised, if the constitution
of man is to be understood, and if the student is to read more
16
advanced treatises with intelligence. True, to make the personality
human it has yet to come under the rays of mind, and to be
illuminated by it as the world by the rays of the sun. But even
without these rays it is a clearly defined entity, with its dense body,
its etheric double, its life, and its desire body or animal soul. It has
passions, but no reason; it has emotions, but no intellect; it has
desires, but no rationalised will; it awaits the coming of its
monarch, the mind, the touch which shall transform it into
man.[Page 25]
PRINCIPLE
-5MANAS, THE THINKER, OR MIND
We have reached the most complicated part of our
study, and some thought and attention are necessary from the
reader to gain even an elementary idea of the relation held by the
fifth principle to the other principles in man.
The word Manas comes from the Sanskrit word man,
the root of the verb to think; it is the Thinker in us, spoken of
vaguely in the West as mind. I will ask the reader to regard Manas
as Thinker rather than as mind, because the word Thinker suggests
some one who thinks, i.e., an individual, an entity. And this is
exactly the Theosophical idea of Manas, for Manas is the immortal
individual, the real “ I”, that clothes itself over and over again in
transient personalities, and itself endures for ever. It is described in
the Voice of the Silence in the exhortation addressed to the
candidate for initiation: “Have perseverance as one who doth for
evermore endure. Thy shadows [personalities] live and vanish; that
which in thee shall live for ever, that which in thee knows, for it is
knowledge, is not of fleeting life; it is the man that was, that is, and
will be, for whom the hour shall never strike” (p. 31).
H.P.Blavatsky has described it very clearly in the Key to
Theosophy: “Try to imagine a ‘Spirit’, a celestial being, whether we
call it by one name or another, divine in its essential nature, yet not
pure enough to be one [Page 26] with the ALL, and having, in
order to achieve this, to so purify its nature as finally to gain that
goal. It can do so only be passing individually and personally, i.e.,
spiritually and physically, through every experience and feeling
that exists in the manifold or differentiated universe. It has,
therefore, after having gained such experience in the lower
kingdoms, and having ascended higher and still higher with every
rung on the ladder of being, to pass through every experience on
17
the human planes. In its very essence it is Thought, and is,
therefore, called in its plurality Manasaputra, ‘the Sons of
(universal) Mind.’ This individualised ‘Thought’ is what we
Theosophists call the real human Ego, the thinking entity
imprisoned in a case of flesh and bones. This is surely a spiritual
entity, not matter [that is, not matter as we know it, on the plane of
the objective universe] – and such entities are the incarnating Egos
that inform the bundle of animal matter called mankind, and whose
names are Manasa or minds” (Key to Theosophy, p. 183-184).
This idea may be rendered yet clearer perhaps by a
hurried glance cast backward over man’s evolution in the past.
When the quaternary had been slowly built up, it was a fair house
without a tenant, and stood empty awaiting the coming of the one
who was to dwell therein.The name Mânasaputra (the sons of
mind) covers many grades of intelligence, ranging from the mighty
“Sons of the Flame” whose human evolution lies far behind them,
down to those entities who gained individualisation in the cycle
preceding our own, and were ready to incarnate on this earth in
order to accomplish their human stage of evolution. Some
superhuman [Page 27] intelligences incarnated as guides and
teachers of our infant humanity, and became founders and divine
rulers of the ancient civilisations. Large numbers of the entities
spoken of above, who had already evolved some mental faculties,
took up their abode in the human quaternary, in the mindless men.
These are the reincarnating Mânasaputra, who became the tenants
of the human frames as then evolved on earth, and these same
Mânasaputra, reincarnating age after age, are the Reincarnating
Egos, the Manas in us, the persistent individual, the fifth principle
in man.The remainder of mankind through successive ages received
from the loftier Mânasaputra their first spark of mind, a ray which
stimulated into growth the germ of mind latent within them, the
human soul thus having its birth in time there. It is these differences
of age, as we may call them, in the beginning of the individual life,
of the specialisation of the eternal Divine Spirit into a human soul,
which explain the enormous differences in mental capacity found in
our present humanity.
The multiplicity of names given to this fifth principle
has probably tended to increase the confusion surrounding it in the
minds of many who are beginning to study Theosophy.
Mânasaputra is what we call the historical name, the name that
suggests the entrance into humanity of a class of already
18
individualised souls at a certain point of evolution; Manas is the
ordinary name, descriptive of the intellectual nature of the
principle; the Individual or the “ I ”, or Ego, recalls the fact that this
principle is permanent, does not die, is the individualising principle,
separating itself in thought from all that is not itself, the Subject in
Western terminology as opposed to the Object; the Higher Ego puts
it into contrast with the Personal Ego, of which [Page 28]
something is to be presently said .The Reincarnating Ego lays
stress on the fact that it is the principle that reincarnates
continually, and so unites in its own experience all the lives passed
through on earth. There are various other names, but they will not
be met with in elementary treatises.The above are those most often
encountered, and there is no real difficulty about them, but when
they are used interchangeably, without explanation, the unhappy
student is apt to tear his hair in anguish, wondering how many
principles he has got hold of, and what relation they bear to each
other.
We must now consider Manas during a single
incarnation, which will serve as the type of all, and we will start
when the Ego has been drawn – by causes set a-going in previous
earth-lives – to the family in which is to be born the human being
who is to serve as its next tabernacle. (I do not deal here with
reincarnation, since that great and most essential doctrine of
Theosophy must be expounded separately). The Thinker, then,
awaits the building of the “house of life” which he is to occupy;
and now arises a difficulty; himself a spiritual entity living on the
mental or third plane upwards, a plane far higher than that of the
physical universe, he cannot influence the molecules of gross
matter of which his dwelling is built by the direct play upon them
of his own most subtle particles.So, he projects part of his own
substance, which clothes itself with astral matter, and then with the
help of etheric matter permeates the whole nervous system of the
yet unborn child, to form, as the physical apparatus matures, the
thinking principle in man. This projection from Manas, spoken of
as its reflection, its shadow, its ray, and by many another
descriptive and allegorical [Page 29] name, is the lower Manas, in
contradistinction to the higher Manas – Manas, during every period
of incarnation, being dual.On this, H.P.Blavatsky says: “Once
imprisoned, or incarnate, their (the Manas) essence becomes dual;
that is to say the rays of the eternal divine Mind, considered as
individual entities, assume a twofold attribute which is (a) their
19
essential, inherent, characteristic, heaven-aspiring mind (higher
Manas), and (b) the human quality of thinking, or animal
cogitation, rationalised owing to the superiority of the human brain,
the Kâma-tending or lower Manas” (Key to Theosophy, p. 184).
We must now turn our attention to this lower Manas
alone, and see the part which it plays in the human constitution.
It is engulfed in the quaternary, and we may regard it
as clasping Kâma with one hand, while with the other it retains its
hold on its father, the higher Manas. Whether it will be dragged
down by Kâma altogether and be torn away from the triad to which
by its nature it belongs, or whether it will triumphantly carry back
to its source the purified experiences of its earth-life – that is the
life-problem set and solved in each successive incarnation. During
earth-life, Kâma and the lower Manas are joined together, and are
often spoken of conveniently as Kâma-Manas. Kâma supplies, as
we have seen, the animal and passional elements; the lower Manas
rationalises these, and adds the intellectual faculties; and so we
have the brain-mind, the brain-intelligence, i.e., Kâma-Manas
functioning in the brain and nervous system, using the physical
apparatus as its organ on the material plane.In man these two
principles are interwoven during life, and rarely act separately,
[Page 30] but the student must realise that “Kâma-Manas“ is not a
new principle, but the interweaving of the fourth with the lower
part of the fifth.
As with a flame we may light a wick, and the colour of
the flame of the burning wick will depend on the nature of the wick
and of the liquid in which it is soaked, so in each human being the
flame of Manas set alight the brain and Kâmic wick, and the colour
of the light from that wick will depend on the Kâmic nature and the
development of the brain-apparatus.If the Kâmic nature be strong
and undisciplined it will soil the pure manasic light, lending it a
lurid tinge and fouling it with noisome smoke. If the brainapparatus be imperfect or undeveloped, it will dull the light and
prevent it from shining forth to the outer world. As was clearly
stated by H.P.Blavatsky in her article on “Genius”; “What we call
‘the manifestations of genius’ in a person are only the more or less
successful efforts of that Ego to assert itself on the outward plane of
its objective form – the man of clay – in the matter-of-fact daily life
of the latter. The Egos of a Newton, an Aeschylus, or a
Shakespeare are of the same essence and substance as the Egos of
a yokel, an ignoramus, a fool, or even an idiot; and the self20
assertion of their informing genii depends on the physiological and
material construction of the physical man. No Ego differs from
another Ego in its primordial or original essence and nature. That
which makes of one mortal a great man and of another a vulgar
silly person is, as said, the quality and make-up of the physical shell
or casing, and the adequacy or inadequacy of brain and body to
transmit and give expression to the light of the real inner man; and
this aptness or inaptness is, in its [Page 31] turn, the result of
Karma.Or, to use another simile, physical man is the musical
instrument, and the Ego the performing artist. The potentiality of
perfect melody of sound is in the former – the instrument – and no
skill of the latter can awaken a faultless harmony out of a broken or
badly made instrument. This harmony depends on the fidelity of
transmission, by word and act, to the objective plane, of the
unspoken divine thought in the very depths of man’s subjective or
inner nature. Physical man may – to follow our simile – be a
priceless Stradivarius, or a cheap and cracked fiddle, or again a
mediocrity between the two, in the hands of the Paganini who
ensouls him” (Lucifer November, 1889, p.228).
Bearing in mind these limitations and idiosyncrasies
[Limitations and idiosyncrasies due to the action of the Ego in
previous earth-lives, be it remembered ] imposed on the
manifestations of the thinking principle by the organ through which
it has to function, we shall have little difficulty in following the
workings of the lower Manas in man; mental ability, intellectual
strength, acuteness, subtlety – all these are its manifestations; these
may reach as far as what is often called genius, what H.P.
Blavatsky speaks of as “artificial genius, the outcome of culture
and of purely intellectual acuteness”. Its nature is often
demonstrated by the presence of Kâmic elements in it, of passion,
vanity and arrogance.
The higher Manas can but rarely manifest itself at the
present stage of human evolution. Occasionally a flash from those
loftier regions lightens the twilight in which we dwell, and such
flashes alone are what the Theosophist calls true genius; “Behold in
every [Page 32] manifestation of genius, when combined with
virtue, the undeniable presence of the celestial exile, the divine Ego
whose jailer thou art, O man of matter.”For theosophy teaches “that
the presence in man of various creative powers” – called genius in
their collectivity – is due to no blind chance, to no innate qualities
through hereditary tendencies – though that which is known as
21
atavism may often intensify these faculties – but to an accumulation
of individual antecedent experiences of the Ego in its preceding life
and lives.For, omniscient in its essence and nature, it still requires
experience, through its personalities, of the things of earth, earthly
on the objective plane, in order to apply the fruition of that abstract
experience to them. And, adds our philosophy, the cultivation of
certain aptitudes through out a long series of past incarnations must
finally culminate, in some one life, in a blooming forth as genius, in
one or another direction” – ( Lucifer November, 1889, p. 229-30).
For the manifestation of true genius, purity of life is an essential
condition.
Kâma-Manas is the personal self of man; we have
already seen that the quaternary, as a whole, is the personality, “the
shadow”. and the lower Manas gives the individualising touch that
makes the personality recognise itself as “ I “. It becomes
intellectual, it recognises itself as separate from all other selves;
deluded by the separateness it feels, it does not realise a unity
beyond all that it is able to sense. And the lower Manas, attracted
by the vividness of the material-life impressions, swayed by the
rush of the Kâmic emotions, passions and desires, attracted to all
material things blinded and deafened by the storm voices among
which it is plunged – the lower Manas is apt to forget [Page 33] the
pure and serene glory of its birthplace, and to throw itself into the
turbulence which gives rapture in lieu of peace. And, be it
remembered, it is this very lower Manas that yields the last touch of
delight to the senses and to the animal nature; for what is passion
that can neither anticipate nor remember, where is ecstasy without
the subtle force of imagination, the delicate colours of fancy and of
dream?
But there may be chains yet more strong and
constraining, binding the lower Manas fast to the earth. They are
forged of ambition, of desire for fame, be it for that of the
statesman’s power, or of supreme intellectual achievement. So long
as any work is wrought for sake of love, or praise, or even
recognition that the work is “mine” and not another’s; so long as in
the heart’s remotest chambers one subtlest yearning remains to be
recognised as separate from all; so long, however grand the
ambition, however far reaching the charity, however lofty the
achievement, Manas is tainted with Kâma, and is not pure as its
source.
MANAS IN ACTIVITY
22
We have already seen that the fifth principle is dual in
its aspect during each period of earth-life, and that the lower Manas
united to Kâma, spoken of conveniently as Kâma-Manas, functions
in the brain and nervous system of man. We need to carry our
investigation a little further in order to distinguish clearly between
the activity of the higher and of the lower Manas, so that the
working in the mind of man may become less obscure to us that it
is at present to many. [Page 34]
Now the cells of the brain and nervous system (like all
other cells) are composed of minute particles of matter, called
molecules (literally, little heaps). These molecules do not touch
each other, but are held grouped together by that manifestation of
the Eternal Life which we call attraction. Not being in contact with
each other they are able to vibrate to and fro if set in motion, and,
as a matter of fact, they are in a state of continual vibration .
H.P.Blavatsky points out (Lucifer, October, 1890, p. 92-93) that
molecular motion is the lowest and most material form of the One
Eternal Life. Itself motion as the “Great Breath”, and the source of
all motion on every plane of the universe. In the Sanskrit, the roots
of the terms for spirit, breath, being and motion are essentially the
same, and Râma Prâsad says that “all these roots have for their
origin the sound produced by the breath of animals” – the sound of
expiration and inspiration.
Now, the lower mind, or Kâma-Manas, acts on the
molecules of the nervous cells by motion, and set them vibrating,
so starting mind-consciousness on the physical plane. Manas itself
could not affect these molecules ; but its ray, the lower Manas,
having clothed itself in astral matter and united itself to the kâmic
elements, is able to set the physical molecules in motion, and so
give rise to “brain consciousness,” including the brain memory and
all other functions of the human mind, as we know it in its ordinary
activity. These manifestations, “like all other phenomena on the
material plane ... must be related in their final analysis to the world
of vibration,” says H.P.Blavatsky. But, she goes on to point out ,
“in their origin they belong to a different and higher world of
harmony”. Their [Page 35] origin is in the manasic essence, in the
ray; but on the material plane, acting on the molecules of the brain,
they are translated into vibrations.
This action of the Kâma-Manas is spoken of by
Theosophists as psychic. All mental and passional activities are due
to this psychic energy, and its manifestations are necessarily
23
conditioned by the physical apparatus through which it acts. We
have already seen this broadly stated ( ante, p. 29-30), and the
rationale of the statement will now be apparent.If the molecular
constitution of the brain be fine, and if the working of the
specifically kâmic organs (liver, spleen, etc.) be healthy and pure –
so as not to injure the molecular constitution of the nerves which
put them into communication with the brain – then the psychic
breath, as it sweeps through the instrument, awakens in this true
Aeolian harp harmonious and exquisite melodies; whereas if the
molecular constitution be gross or poor, if it be disordered by the
emanations of alcohol, if the blood be poisoned by gross living or
sexual excesses, the strings of the Aeolian harp become too loose or
too tense, clogged with dirt or frayed with harsh usage, and when
the psychic breath passes over them they remain dumb or give out
harsh discordant notes, not because the breath is absent, but
because the strings are in evil case.
It will now, I think, be clearly understood that what we
call mind, or intellect, is in H.P.Blavatsky’s words, “a pale and too
often distorted reflection” of Manas itself, or our fifth principle;
Kâma-Manas is “the rational, but earthly or physical intellect of
man, incased in, and bound by, matter, therefore subject to the
influence of the latter”; it is the “lower self, or that [Page 36] which
manifesting through our organic system, acting on this plane of
illusion, imagines itself the Ego sum, and thus falls into what
Buddhist philosophy brands as the ‘heresy of separateness.’ It is the
human personality, from which proceeds “the psychic, i.e.,
‘terrestrial wisdom’ at best, as it is influenced by all the chaotic
stimuli of the human or rather animal passions of the living body”
(Lucifer, October, 1890, p.179).
A clear understanding of the fact that Kâma-Manas
belongs to the human personality, that it functions in and through
the physical brain, that it acts on the molecules of the brain, setting
them into vibration, will very much facilitate the comprehension by
the student of the doctrine of reincarnation.That great subject will
be dealt with in another volume of this series, and I do not propose
to dwell upon it here, more than to remind the student to take
careful note of the fact that the lower Manas is a ray from the
immortal Thinker, illuminating a personality, and that all the
functions which are brought into activity in the brain-consciousness
are functions correlated to the particular brain, to the particular
personality, in which they occur.The brain-molecules that are set
24
vibrating are material organs in the man of flesh; they did not exist
as brain molecules before his conception, nor do they persist as
brain molecules after his disintegration. Their functional activity is
limited by the limits of his personal life, the life of the body, the life
of the transient personality.
Now the faulty of which we speak as memory on the
physical plane depends on the response of these very brainmolecules to the impulse of the lower Manas, and there is no link
between the brains of successive personalities except through the
higher Manas, that sends [Page 37] out its ray to inform and
enlighten them successively. It follows, then, inevitably, that unless
the consciousness of man can rise from the physical and Kâmamanasic planes to the plane of the higher Manas, no memory of one
personality can reach over to another. The memory of the
personality belongs to the transitory part of man’s complex nature,
and those only can recover the memory of their past lives who can
raise their consciousness to the plane of the immortal Thinker, and
can, so to speak, travel in consciousness up and down the ray which
is the bridge between the personal man that perishes and the
immortal man that endures. If, while we are cased in the human
flesh, we can raise our consciousness along the ray that connects
our lower with our true Self, and so reach the higher Manas, we
find there stored in the memory of that eternal Ego the whole of our
past lives on earth, and we can bring back those records to our
brain-memory by way of that same ray, through which we can
climb upwards to our “Father”. But this is an achievement that
belongs to a late stage of human evolution, and until this is reached
the successive personalities informed by the manasic rays are
separated from each other, and no memory bridges over the gulf
between. The fact is obvious enough to any one who thinks the
matter out, but as the difference between the personality and the
immortal individuality is somewhat unfamiliar in the West, it may
be well to remove a possible stumbling-block from the student’s
path.
Now the lower Manas may do one of three things; It
may rise towards its source, and by unremitting and strenuous
efforts become one with its “Father in heaven,” or the higher Manas
– Manas uncontaminated with [Page 38] earthly elements, unsoiled
and pure. Or it may partially aspire and partially tend downwards,
as indeed is mostly the case with the average man. Or saddest fate
of all, it may become so clogged with the kâmic elements as to
25
become one with them, and be finally wrenched away from its
parent and perish.
Before considering these three fates, there are a few
more words to be said touching the activity of the lower Manas.
As the lower Manas frees itself from Kâma, it becomes
the sovereign of the lower part of man, and manifests more and
more of its true and essential nature. In Kâma is desire, moved by
bodily needs, and Will, which is the outgoing energy of the Self in
Manas, is often led captive by the turbulent physical impulses. But
the lower Manas, “whenever it disconnects itself, for the time
being, from Kâma, becomes the guide of the highest mental
faculties, and is the organ of the free will in physical man” (Lucifer,
October 1890, page 94). But the condition of this freedom is that
Kâma shall be subdued, shall lie prostrate beneath the feet of the
conqueror; if the maiden Will is to be set free, the manasic St.
George must slay the kâmic dragon that holds her captive ; for
while Kâma is unconquered, Desire will be master of the Will.
Again, as the lower Manas frees itself from Kâma, it
becomes more and more capable of transmitting to the human
personality with which it is connected the impulses that reach it
from its source. It is then, as we have seen, that genius flashes
forth, the light from the higher Ego streaming through the lower
Manas to the brain, and manifesting itself to the world. So also, as
H.P.Blavatsky points out, such action may raise a [Page 39] man
above the normal level of human power. “The higher Ego”, she
says, “cannot act directly on the body, as its consciousness belongs
to quite another plane and planes of ideation; the lower self does;
and its action and behaviour depend on its freewill and choice as to
whether it will gravitate more towards its parent (‘the Father in
heaven’) or the ‘animal’ which it informs, the man of flesh. The
higher Ego, as part of the essence of the Universal Mind, is
unconditionally omniscient on its own plane, and only potentially
so in our terrestrial sphere, as it has to act solely through its alter
ego the personal self. Now …the former is the vehicle of all
knowledge of the past, the present and the future, and …it is from
this fountain head that its ‘double’ catches occasional glimpses of
that which is beyond the senses of man, and transmits them to
certain brain-cells (unknown to science in their functions), thus
making of man a seer, a soothsayer and a prophet” (Lucifer,
November, 1890, p. 179).This is the real seership, and on it a few
words must be said presently. It is, naturally, extremely rare, and
26
precious as it is rare. A “faint and distorted reflection” of it is found
in what is called mediumship, and of this H.P.Blavatsky says:
“Now what is a medium? The term medium, when not applied to
things and objects, is supposed to be a person through whom the
action of another person or being is either manifested or transmitted
. Spiritualists believing in communications with disembodied
spirits, and that these can manifest through, or impress sensitives to
transmit messages from them, regard mediumship as a blessing and
a great privilege. We Theosophists, on the other hand, who do not
believe in the ‘communion of spirits’, as Spiritualists do, regard
[Page 40] the gift as one of the most dangerous of abnormal
nervous diseases. A medium is simply one in whose personal Ego,
or terrestrial mind, the percentage of the astral light so
preponderates as to impregnate with it his whole physical
constitution. Every organ and cell thereby is attuned, so to speak,
and subject to an enormous and abnormal tension” (Lucifer,
November 1890, page 183).
To return to the three fates spoken of above, any one of
which
may
befall
the
lower
Manas.
It may rise towards its source and become one with the Father in
heaven. This triumph can only be gained by many successive
incarnations, all consciously directed towards this end. As life
succeeds life, the physical frame becomes more and more delicately
attuned to vibrations responsive to the manasic impulses, so that
gradually the manasic ray needs less and less of the coarser astral
matter as its vehicle.“It is part of the mission of the manasic ray to
get gradually rid of the blind deceptive element which, though it
makes of it an actual spiritual entity on this plane, still brings it into
so close contact with matter as to entirely becloud its divine nature
and stultify its intuitions” (Lucifer, November, 1890, p. 182). Life
after life it rids itself of this “blind deceptive element”, until at
least, master of Kâma, and with body responsive to mind, the ray
becomes one with its radiant source, the lower nature is wholly
attuned to the higher, and the Adept stands forth complete, the
“Father and the Son”, having become one on all planes, as they
have been always “one in heaven”. For him the wheel of
incarnation is over, the cycle of necessity is trodden. Henceforth he
can incarnate at will, to do any special service to [Page 41]
mankind; or he can dwell in the planes round the earth without the
27
physical body, helping in the further evolution of the globe and of
the race.
It may partially aspire and partially tend downwards.
This is the normal experience of the average man. All life is a
battlefield, and the battle rages in the lower manasic region, where
Manas wrestles with Kâma for empire over man. Anon aspiration
conquers, the chains of sense are broken, and the lower Manas,
with the radiance of its birthplace on it, soars upwards on strong
wings, spurning the soil of earth.But alas! too soon the pinions tire,
they flag, they flutter, they cease to beat the air; and downwards
falls the royal bird whose true realm is that of the higher air, and he
flutters heavily to the bog of earth once more, and Kâma chains
him down.
When the period of incarnation is over, and the
gateway of death closes the road of earthly life, what becomes of
the lower Manas in the case we are considering?
Soon after the death of the physical body, KâmaManas is set free, and dwells for a while on the astral plane clothed
with a body of astral matter. From this all of the manasic ray that is
pure and unsoiled gradually disentangles itself, and, after a lengthy
period spent on the lower levels of Devachan, it returns to its
source, carrying with it such of its life-experiences as are of a
nature fit for assimilation with the Higher Ego. Manas thus again
becomes one during the latter part of the period which intervenes
between two incarnations. The manasic Ego, brooded over by
Âtma-Buddhi – the two highest principles in the human
constitution, not yet considered by us – passes into the devachanic
[Page 42] state of consciousness, resting from the weariness of the
life-struggle through which it has passed. The experiences of the
earth-life just closed are carried into the manasic consciousness by
the lower ray withdrawn into its source. They make the devachanic
state a continuation of earth-life, shorn of its sorrows, a completion
of the wishes and desires of earth-life, so far as those were pure and
noble. The poetic phrase that “the mind creates its own heaven” is
truer than many may have imagined, for everywhere man is what
he thinks, and in the devachanic state the mind is unfettered by the
gross physical matter through which it works on the objective
plane.The devachanic period is the time for the assimilation of life
experiences, the regaining of equilibrium, ere a new journey is
commenced. It is the day that succeeds the night of earth-life, the
alternative of the objective manifestation. Periodicity is here, as
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everywhere else in nature, ebb and flow, throb and rest, the rhythm
of the Universal Life. This devachanic state of consciousness lasts
for a period of varying length, proportioned to the stage reached in
evolution, the Devachan of the average man being said to extend
over some fifteen-hundred years.
Meanwhile, that portion of the impure garment of the
lower Manas which remains entangled with Kâma gives to the
desire-body a somewhat confused consciousness, a broken memory
of the events of the life just closed. If the emotions and passions
were strong and the manasic element weak during the period of
incarnation, the desire-body will be strongly energised, and will
persist in its activity for a considerable length of time after the
death of the physical body. It will also show a considerable amount
of consciousness, as much of the [Page 43] manasic ray will have
been overpowered by the vigorous kâmic elements, and will have
remained entangled in them. If, on the other hand, the earth-life just
closed was characterised my mentality and purity rather than by
passion, the desire-body, being but poorly energised, will be a pale
simulacrum of the person to whom it belonged, and will fade away,
disintegrate and perish before any long period has elapsed.
The “spook” already mentioned (ante, p. 20-21) will
now be understood. It may show very considerable intelligence, if
the manasic element be still largely present, and this will be the
case with the desire-body of persons of strong animal nature and
forcible though coarse intellect.For intelligence working in a very
powerful kâmic personality will be exceedingly strong and
energetic, though not subtle or delicate, and the spook of such a
person, still further vitalised by the magnetic currents of persons
yet living in the body, may show much intellectual ability of a low
type.But such a spook is conscienceless, devoid of good impulses,
tending towards disintegration, and communications with it can
work for evil only, whether we regard them as prolonging its
vitality by the currents which it sucks up from the bodies and kâmic
elements of the living, or as exhausting the vitality of these living
persons and polluting them with astral connections of an altogether
undesirable kind.
Nor should it be forgotten that, without attending
séance-rooms at all, living persons may come into objectionable
contact with these kâmic spooks. As already mentioned, they are
attracted to places in which the animal part of man is chiefly
catered for; drinking houses, gambling saloons, brothels – all these
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places are [Page 44] full of the vilest magnetism, are very
whirlpools of magnetic currents of the foulest type. These attract
the spooks magnetically, and they drift to such psychic maelstroms
of all that is earthly and sensual. Vivified by currents so congenial
to their own, the desire-bodies become more active and potent;
impregnated with the emanations of passions and desires which
they can no longer physically satisfy, their magnetic current
reinforce the similar currents in the live persons, action and reaction
continually going on, and the animal natures of the living become
more potent and less controlled by the will as they are played on by
these forces of the kâmic world. Kâma-loka (from loka, a place,
and so the place for Kâma) is a name often used to designate that
plane of the astral world to which these spooks belong, and from
this ray forth magnetic currents of poisonous character, as from a
pest-house float out germs of disease which may take root and
grow in the congenial soil of some poorly vitalised physical body.
It is very possible that many will say, on reading these
statements, that Theosophy is a revival of mediaeval superstitions
and will lead to imaginary terrors. Theosophy explains mediaeval
superstitions, and shows the natural facts on which they were
founded and from which they drew their vitality. If there are planes
in nature other than the physical, no amount of reasoning will get
rid of them and belief in their existence will constantly reappear;
but knowledge will give them their intelligible place in the
universal order, and will prevent superstition by an accurate
understanding of their nature, and of the laws under which they
function.And let it be remembered that persons whose [Page 45]
consciousness is normally on the physical plane can protect
themselves from undesirable influences by keeping their minds
clean and their wills strong. We protect ourselves best against
disease by maintaining our bodies in vigorous health; we cannot
guard ourselves against invisible germs, but we can prevent our
bodies from becoming suitable soil for the growth and development
of the germs. Nor need we deliberately throw ourselves in the way
infection. So also as regards these malign germs from the astral
plane. We can prevent the formation of Kâma-manasic soil in
which they can germinate and develop, and we need not go into
evil places, nor deliberately encourage receptivity and mediumistic
tendencies. A strong active will and a pure heart are our best
protection.
30
There remains the third possibility for Kâma-Manas, to
which we must now turn our attention, the fate spoken of earlier as
“terrible in its consequences, which may befall the kâmic
principle”.
It may break away from its source made one with Kâma instead of
with the higher Manas. This is fortunately, a rare event, as rare at
one pole of human life as the complete re-union with the higher
Manas is rare at the other. But still the possibility remains and must
be stated.
The personality may be so strongly controlled by
Kâma that, in the struggle between the kâmic and manasic
elements, the victory may remain wholly with the former. The
lower Manas may become so enslaved that its essence may be
frayed and thinner and thinner by the constant rub and strain, until
at last persistent yielding to the promptings of desire bears its
inevitable fruit, and the slender link which unites the higher to
[Page 46] the lower Manas, the “silver thread that binds it to the
Master”, snaps in two.Then, during earth-life, the lower quaternary
is wrenched away from the Triad to which it was linked, and the
higher nature is severed wholly from the lower. The human being is
rent in twain, the brute has broken itself free, and it goes forth
unbridled, carrying with it the reflections of that manasic light
which should have been its guide through the desert of life . A more
dangerous brute it is than its fellows of the unevolved animal
world, just because of these fragments in it of the higher mentality
of man. Such a being, human in form but brute in nature, human in
appearance but without human truth, or love or justice – such a one
may now and then be met with in the haunts of men, putrescent
while still living, a thing to shudder at with deepest, if hopeless
compassion. What is its fate after the funeral knell has tolled?
Ultimately, there is the perishing of the personality that
has thus broken away from the principles that can alone give it
immortality. But a period of persistence lies before it.
The desire-body of such a one is an entity of terrible potency, and it
has this unique peculiarity, that it is able under certain rare
circumstances to reincarnate in the world of men.It is not a mere
“spook” on the way to disintegration; it has retained, entangled in
its coils , too much of the manasic element to permit of such natural
dissipation in space. It is sufficiently an independent entity, lurid
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instead of radiant, with manasic flame rendered foul instead of
purifying, as to be able to take to itself a garment of flesh once
more and dwell as man with men. Such a man – if the word [Page
47] may indeed be applied to the mere human shell with brute
interior – passes through a period of earth-life the natural foe of all
who are still normal in their humanity. With no instincts save those
of the animal, driven only by passion, never even by emotion, with
a cunning that no brute can rival, a deliberate wickedness that plans
evil in fashion unknown to the mere frankly natural impulses of the
animal world, the reincarnated entity touches ideal vileness.Such
soil the page of human history as the monsters of iniquity that
startle us now and again into a wondering cry, “Is this a human
being?” Sinking lower with each successive incarnation, the evil
force gradually wears itself out, and such a personality perishes
separated from the source of life. It finally disintegrates, to be
worked up into other forms of living things, but as a separate
existence, it is lost. It is a bead broken off the thread of life, and the
immortal Ego that incarnated in that personality has lost the
experience of that incarnation, has reaped no harvest from that lifesowing. Its ray has brought nothing back, its lifework for that birth
has been a total and complete failure, whereof nothing remains to
weave into the fabric of its own eternal Self. [Page 48]
SUBTLE FORMS OF THE FOURTH AND FIFTH
PRINCIPLE
The student will already have fully realised that “an
astral body” is a loose term that may cover a variety of different
forms. It may be well at this stage to sum up the subtle types
sometimes inaccurately called the astral that belong to the fourth
and fifth principles.
During life a true astral body may be projected –
formed, as its name implies, of astral matter – but, unlike the
etheric double, dowered with intelligence, and able to travel to a
considerable distance from the physical body to which it belongs.
This is the desire-body, and it is, as we have seen, a vehicle of
consciousness. It is projected by mediums and sensitives
unconsciously, and by trained students consciously.It can travel
with the speed of thought to a distant place, can there gather
impressions from surrounding objects, can bring back those
impressions to the physical body. In the case of a medium it can
convey them to others by means of the physical body still
entranced, but as a rule when the sensitive comes out of trance, the
32
brain does not retain the impressions thus made upon it, and no
trace is left in the memory of the experiences thus acquired.
Sometimes, but this is rare, the desire-body is able sufficiently to
affect the brain by the vibrations it set up, to leave a lasting
impression thereon, and then the sensitive is able to recall the
knowledge acquired during trance. The student learns to impress on
his brain the knowledge gained in the desire-body, his will being
active while that of the medium is passive.[Page 49]
This desire-body is the agent unconsciously used by
clairvoyants when their vision is not merely the seeing in the astral
light. This astral form does then really travel to distant places, and
may appear there to persons who are sensitive or who chance for
the time to be in an abnormal nervous condition. Sometimes it
appears to them – when very faintly informed by consciousness –
as a vaguely outlined form, not noticing its surroundings. Such a
body has appeared near the time of death at places distant from the
dying person, to those who were closely united to the dying by ties
of the blood, of affection, or of hatred. More highly energised, it
will show intelligence and emotion, as in some cases on record, in
which dying mothers have visited their children residing at a
distance, and have spoken in their last moments of what they had
seen and done. The desire-body is also set free in many cases of
disease – as is the etheric double – as well as in sleep and in trance.
Inactivity of the physical body is a condition of such astral
voyagings.
The desire-body seems also occasionally to appear in séancerooms, giving rise to some of the more intellectual phenomena that
takes place. It must not be confounded with the “spook” already
sufficiently familiar to the reader, the latter being always the kâmic
or Kâma-Manasic remains of some dead person, whereas the body
we are now dealing with is the projection of an astral double from a
living person.
A higher form of subtle body, belonging to Manas, is
that known as the Mâyâvi Rûpa, or “body of illusion”. The Mâyâvi
Rûpa is a subtle body formed by the consciously directed will of
the Adept or disciple; it may, or may not, resemble the physical
body, the form given [Page 50] to it being suitable to the purpose
for which it is projected. In this body the full consciousness dwells,
for it is merely the mental body rearranged. The Adept or disciple
can thus travel at will, without the burden of the physical body, in
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the full exercise of every faculty, in perfect self-consciousness. He
makes the Mâyâvi Rûpa visible of invisible at will – on the physical
plane – and the phrase often used by chelâs and others as to seeing
an Adept “in his astral”, means that he was visited by them in his
Mâyâvi Rûpa. If he so chose, he can make it, indistinguishable
from a physical body, warm and firm to the touch as well as visible,
able to carry on a conversation, at all points like a physical human
being. But the power thus to form the true Mâyâvi Rûpa is
confined to Adepts and chelâs; it cannot be done by the untrained
student, however psychic he may naturally be, for it is a manasic
and not a psychic creation, and it is only under the instruction of his
Guru that the chelâ learns to form and use the “body of illusion”.
THE HIGHER MANAS
The immortal Thinker itself, as will by this time have
become clear to the reader, can manifest itself but little on the
physical plane at the present stage of human evolution. Yet we are
able to catch some glimpses of the powers resident in it, the more
as in the lower Manas we find those powers “cribbed, cabined and
confined” indeed, but yet existing. Thus we have seen (p. 37) that
the lower Manas “is the organ of the freewill in physical man”.
Freewill resides in Manas itself, [Page 51] in Manas the
representative of Mahat, the Universal Mind. From Manas comes
the feeling of liberty, the knowledge that we can rule ourselves –
really the knowledge that the higher nature in us can rule the lower,
let that lower nature rebel and struggle as it may. Once let our
consciousness identify itself with Manas instead of with Kâma, and
the lower nature becomes the animal we bestride, it is no longer the
“I”. All its plungings, its struggles, its fights for mastery, are then
outside us, not within us, and we rein it in and hold it as we rein in
a plunging steed and subdue it to our will.
On this question of freewill I venture to quote from an
article of my own that appeared in the Path –
“Unconditioned will, alone can be absolutely free: the
unconditioned and the absolute are one: all that is conditioned
must, by virtue of that conditioning, be relative and therefore
partially bound. As that will evolves the universe, it becomes
conditioned by the laws of its own manifestation. The manasic
entities are differentiations of that will, each conditioned by the
nature of its manifesting potency, but, while conditioned without, it
is free within its own sphere of activity, so being the image in its
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own world of the universal will in the universe. Now as this will,
acting on each successive plane, crystalises itself more and more
densely as matter, the manifestation is conditioned by the material
in which it works, while, relatively to the material, it is itself
free.So at each stage the inner freedom appears in consciousness,
while yet investigation shows that, that freedom works within the
limits of the plane of manifestation on which it is acting, free to
work upon the lower, yet hindered as to manifestation by the
unresponsiveness of the lower to its impulse. [Page 52] Thus the
higher Manas, in whom resides free will, so far as the lower
quaternary is concerned – being the offspring of Mahat, the third
Logos, the Word, i.e., the Will in manifestation – is limited in its
manifestation in our lower nature by the sluggishness of the
response of the personality to its impulses. In the lower Manas
itself – as immersed in that personality - resides the will with which
we are familiar, swayed by passions, by appetites, by desires, by
impressions coming from without, yet able to assert itself among
them all, by virtue of its essential nature, one with that higher Ego
of which it is the ray.It is free, as regards all below it, able to act on
Kâma and on the physical body, however much its full expression
may be thwarted and hindered by the crudeness of the material in
which it is working. Were the will the mere outcome of the
physical body, of the desires and passions, whence could arise the
sense of the “ I “ that can judge, can desire, can overcome? It acts
from a higher plane, is royal as touching the lower whenever it
claims the royalty of birthright, and the very struggle of its selfassertion is the best testimony to the fact that in its nature it is free.
And so, passing to lower planes, we find in each grade this
freedom of the higher as ruling the lower, yet, on the plane of the
lower, hindered in manifestation . Reversing the process and
starting from the lower, the same truth becomes manifest. Let a
man’s limbs be loaded with fetters, and crude material iron will
prevent the manifestation of the muscular and nervous force with
which they are instinct: none the less is that force present, though
hindered for the moment in its activity. Its strength may be shown
in its very efforts to break the chains that bind it there, [Page 53] is
no power in the iron to prevent the free giving out of the muscular
energy, though the phenomena of motion may be hindered. But
while this energy cannot be ruled by the physical nature below, its
expenditure is determined by the kâmic principle; passions and
desires can set it going, can direct and control it. The muscular and
35
nervous energy cannot rule the passions and desires, they are free
as regards it, it is determined by their interposition.Yet again Kâma
may be ruled, controlled, determined by the will; as touching the
manasic principle it is bound, not free, and hence the sense of
freedom in choosing which desire shall be gratified, which act
performed. As the lower Manas rules Kâma, the lower quaternary
takes its rightful position of subserviency to the higher triad, and is
determined by a will it recognises as above itself, and, as it regards
itself, a will that is free. Here in many a mind will spring the
question, ‘And what of the will of the higher Manas; is that in turn
determined by what is above it, while it is free to all below? But we
have reached a point where the intellect fails us, and where
language may not easily utter that which the Spirit senses in those
higher realms. Dimly only can we feel that there , as everywhere
else, "the truest freedom must be in harmony with law, and that
voluntary acceptance of the function of acting as channel of the
Universal Will must unite into one perfect liberty and perfect
obedience”.
This is truly an obscure and difficult problem, but the
student will find much light fall on it by following the lines of
thought thus traced.
Another power resident in the higher Manas and
manifested on the lower planes by those in whom the higher Manas
is consciously master, is that of creation [Page 54] of forms by the
will. The Secret Doctrine says: “Kriyashakti”. The mysterious
power of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible,
phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancient held
that any idea will manifest itself externally if one’s attention is
deeply concentrated upon it. Similarly an intense volition will be
followed by the desired results” (vol. I, p. 312). Here is the secret
of true “magic”. and as the subject is an important one, and as
Western science is beginning to touch its fringe, a separate section
is devoted to its consideration farther on, in order not to break the
connected outline here given on principles.
Again we have learned from H.P.Blavatsky that
Manas, or the higher Ego, as “part of the essence of the Universal
Mind, is unconditionally omniscient on its own plane”, when it has
fully developed self-consciousness by its evolutionary experiences,
and “is the vehicle of all knowledge of the past and present, and the
future”. When this immortal entity is able through its ray, the lower
Manas, to impress the brain of a man, that man is one who
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manifests abnormal qualities, is a genius or seer. The conditions of
seership are thus laid down: “The former [the visions of the true seer]
can be obtained by one of two means: (a) on the
condition of paralysing at will the memory and the
instinctual independent action of all the material organs
and even cells in the body of flesh, an act which, when
once the light of the higher Ego has consumed and
subjected for ever the passional nature of the personal
lower Ego, is easy, but requires an adept; (b) of being a
reincarnation of one who, in a previous birth, had
attained through extreme purity of life and efforts in the
right direction [Page 55] almost to a Yogi-state of
holiness and saintship. There is also a third possibility
of reaching in mystic visions the plane of the higher
Manas; but it is only occasional, and does not depend
on the will of the seer, but on the extreme weakness
and exhaustion of the material body through illness and
suffering. The Seeress of Prevorst was an instance of
the latter case; and Jacob Boehme of our second
category” (Lucifer, November, 1890, p. 183).
The reader will now be in a position to grasp the
difference between the workings of the higher Ego and of its ray.
Genius, which sees instead of arguing, is of the higher Ego; true
intuition is one of its faculties. Reason, the weighing and balancing
quality which arranges the facts gathered by observation, balances
them one against the other, argues from them, draws conclusions
from them – this is the exercise of the lower Manas through the
brain apparatus; its instrument is ratiocination; by induction it
ascends from the known to the unknown, building up a hypothesis;
by deduction it descends again to the known, verifying its
hypothesis by fresh experiment.
Intuition, as we see by its derivation, is simply insight
– a process as direct and swift as bodily vision. It is the exercise of
the eyes of the intelligence, the unerring recognition of a truth
presented on the mental plane. It sees with certainty, its vision is
unclouded, its report unfaltering. No proof can add to the certitude
of its recognition, for it is beyond and above the reason . Often our
instincts, blinded and confused by passions and desires, are
37
miscalled intuitions, and a mere kâmic impulse is accepted as the
sublime voice of the higher Manas. Careful and prolonged selftraining is necessary, ere the voice can be recognised with certainty,
but of [Page 56] one thing we may feel very sure: so long as we are
in the vortex of the personality, so long as the storms of desires and
appetites howl around us, so long as the waves of emotion toss us
to and fro, so long the voice of the higher Manas cannot reach our
ears. Not in the fire or the whirlwind, not in the thunderclap of the
storm, comes the mandate of the higher Ego: only when there has
fallen the stillness of a silence that can be felt, only when the very
air is motionless and the calm is profound, only when the man
wraps his face in a mantle which closes his ears even to the silence
that is of earth, then only sounds the voice that is stiller than the
silence, the voice of his true Self.
On this H. P. Blavatsky has written in Isis Unveiled:
“Allied to the physical half of man’s nature is reason, which
enables him to maintain his supremacy over the lower animals, and
to subjugate nature to his uses. Allied to his spiritual part is his
conscience, which will serve as his unerring guide through the
besetment of the senses; for conscience is that instantaneous
perception between right and wrong which can only be exercised
by the spirit, which, being a portion of the divine wisdom and
purity, is absolutely pure and wise.Its promptings are independent
of reason, and it can only manifest itself clearly when unhampered
by the baser attractions of our dual nature. Reason being a faculty
of our physical brain, one which is justly defined as that of
deducing inferences from premises, and being wholly dependent on
the evidence of other senses, cannot be a quality pertaining directly
to our divine spirit. The latter knows – hence all reasoning, which
implies discussion and argument, would be useless. So an entity
which, if it must be considered as a direct emanation from the
[Page 57] eternal Spirit of wisdom, has to be vied as possessed of
the same attributes as the essence of the whole of which it is part.
Therefore it is with a certain degree of logic that the ancient
Theurgists maintained that the rational part of a man’s soul (spirit)
never entered wholly into the man’s body, but only overshadowed
him more or less through the irrational or astral soul, which serves
as an intermediary agent, or a medium between spirit and body.The
man who has conquered matter sufficiently to receive the direct
light from his shining Augoeides, feels truth intuitionally; he could
not err in his judgement, notwithstanding all the sophisms
38
suggested by cold reason, for he is illuminated. Hence prophesy,
vaticination, and the so-called divine inspiration, are simply the
effects of this illumination from above by our own immortal spirit”
(Volume I, page 305-306).
This Augoeides, according to the belief of the NeoPlatonists, as according to the Theosophical teachings, “sheds more
or less its radiance on the inner man, the astral soul” (Volume, page
315) i.e.., in the now accepted terminology, on the Kâma-Manasic
personality or lower Ego. (In reading Isis Unveiled, the student has
to bear in mind the fact that when the book was written, the
terminology was by no means even as fixed as it is now; in Isis
Unveiled is the first modern attempt to translate into Western
language the complicated Eastern ideas, and further experience has
shown that many of the terms used to cover two or three
conceptions may with advantage be restricted to one and thus
rendered precise. Thus the “astral soul” must be understood in the
sense given above.) Only as this lower Ego becomes pure from all
breath of passion, as the lower Manas frees itself from Kâma, can
the “shining one” impress [Page 58] it; H.P. Blavatsky tells how
initiates meet this higher Ego face to face. Having spoken of the
trinity in man, Âtma-Buddhi-Manas, she goes on: “It is when this
trinity, in anticipation of the final triumphant reunion beyond the
gates of corporeal death, became for a few seconds a unity, that the
candidate is allowed, at the moment of the initiation, to behold his
future self. Thus we read in the Persian Desatir of the ‘resplendent
one’; in the Greek philosopher-initiates of the Augoeides – the selfshining ‘blessed vision resident in the pure light’; in Porphyry, that
Plotinus was united to his ‘god’ six times during his lifetime, and
so on” (Isis Unveiled, Volume II, pages 114-115).
This trinity made into unity, again, is the “Christ” of all
mystics. When in the final initiation, the candidate has been
outstretched on the floor or altar stone and has thus typified the
crucifixion of the flesh, or lower nature, and when from this
“death” he has “risen again” as the triumphant conqueror over sin
and death, he then, in the supreme moment, sees before him the
glorious presence and becomes “one with Christ,” is himself the
Christ. Thenceforth he may live in the body, but it has become his
obedient instrument; he is united with his true Self, Manas made
one with Âtma-Buddhi, and through the personality which he
inhabits he wields his full powers as an immortal spiritual
intelligence. While he was still struggling in the toils of the lower
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nature, Christ, the spiritual Ego, was daily crucified in him; but in
the full Adept Christ has arisen triumphant, lord of himself and of
nature. The long pilgrimage of Manas is over, the cycle of necessity
is trodden, the wheel of rebirth ceases to turn, the Son of man has
been made perfect by suffering. [Page 59]
So long as this point has not been reached, “the Christ”
is the object of aspiration. The ray is ever struggling to return to its
source, the lower Manas ever aspiring to re-become one with the
higher. While this duality persists the continual yearning towards
reunion felt by the noblest and purest natures is one of the most
salient facts of the inner life, and it is this which clothes itself as
prayer, as inspiration, as “seeking after God,” as the longing for
union with the divine. “My soul is athirst for God, for the living
God”, cries the eager Christian, and to tell him that this intense
longing is a fancy and is futile to make him turn aside from you as
one who cannot understand, but whose insensibility does not alter
the fact. The Occultist recognises in this cry the inextinguishable
impulse upwards of the lower Self to the higher from which it is
separated, but the attraction of which it vividly feels. Whether the
person pray to the Buddha, to Vishnu, to Christ, to the Virgin, to
the Father, it matters not at all; these are questions of mere dialect,
not of essential fact. In all the Manas united to Âtma-Buddhi is the
real object , veiled under what name the changing time or race may
give; at once the ideal humanity and the “personal God”, the “God
Man” found in all religions, “God incarnate”, the “Word made
flesh”, “the Christ who must be born in each", with whom the
believer must be made one.
And this leads us on to the last planes with which we
are concerned, the planes of Spirit, using that much abused word
merely as the opposite pole to matter; here only very general ideas
can be grasped by us, but it is necessary none the less to try to grasp
these ideas if we are to complete, however poorly our conception of
man. [Page 60]
PRINCIPLES
-6and
-7ÂTMA – BUDDHI, THE SPIRIT
As the completion of the thought of the last section, we
will look at Âtma-Buddhi first in its connection with Manas, and
will then proceed to a somewhat more general view of it as the
“Monad.” The clearest and best description of the human trinity,
40
Âtma-Buddhi-Manas, will be found in the Key to Theosophy, in
which H.P.Blavatsky gives the following definitions:T
HE
HIGHER
SELF is
T
HE
SPIRITUAL
divine EGO
is
Atma, the inseparable ray
of the Universal and ONE SELF. It is
the God above, more than within us.
Happy the man who succeeds in
saturating his inner Ego with it
the spiritual soul, or
Buddhi, in close union with Manas, the
mind-principle, without which it is no
EGO at all, but only the Atmic Vehicle.
Manas, the fifth principle,
so called, independently of Buddhi.
T
The mind-principle is only the Spiritual
HE INNER
Ego when merged into one with
or HIGHER
Buddhi .. It is the permanent
EGO is
individuality or the reincarnating Ego.
(Page 175-176
Âtmâ must then be regarded as the most abstract part
of man’s nature, the “breath” which needs a body for its
manifestation. It is the one reality, that which manifests on all
planes, the essence of which all our [Page 61] principles are but
aspects. The one Eternal Existence, wherefrom are all things, which
embodies one of its aspects in the universe, that which we speak of
as the One Life – this Eternal Existence rays forth as Âtmâ, the
very Self alike of the universe and of man; their innermost core,
their very heart, that in which all things inhere. In itself incapable
of direct manifestation on lower planes, yet That without which no
lower planes could come into existence, It clothes Itself in Buddhi,
as Its vehicle, or medium of further manifestation. “Buddhi is the
faculty of cognising, the channel through which divine knowledge
reaches the Ego, the discernment of good and evil, also divine
conscience, and the spiritual Soul, which is the vehicle of Âtmâ”
(Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 2). It is often spoken of as the
principle of spiritual discernment. But Âtma-Buddhi, a universal
principle, needs individualising ere experience can be gathered and
self-consciousness attained. So the mind-principle is united to
Âtma-Buddhi, and the human trinity is complete. Manas becomes
41
the spiritual Ego only when merged in Buddhi; Buddhi becomes
the spiritual Ego only when united to Manas; in the union of the
two lies the evolution of the Spirit, self-conscious on all planes.
Hence Manas strives upward to Âtma-Buddhi, as the lower Manas
strives upward to the higher, and hence, in relation to the higher
Manas, Âtma-Buddhi, or Âtma, is often spoken of as “the Father in
Heaven”, as the higher Manas is itself thus described in relation to
the lower. (See ante page 40) The lower Manas gathers experience
to carry it back to its source; the higher Manas accumulates the
store throughout the cycle of reincarnation; Buddhi becomes
assimilated with the higher Manas; [Page 62] and these, permeated
with the Âtmic light, one with that True Self, the trinity becomes a
unity, the Spirit is self-conscious on all planes, and the object of the
manifested universe is attained.
But no words of mine can avail to explain or to
describe that which is beyond explanation and beyond description.
Words can but blunder along on such a theme, dwarfing and
distorting it. Only by long and patient meditation can the student
hope vaguely to sense something greater than himself, yet
something which stirs at the innermost core of his being.As to the
steady gaze directed at the pale evening sky, there appears after
while, faintly and far away, the soft glimmer of a star, so to the
patient gaze of the inner vision there may come the tender beam of
the spiritual star, if but as a mere suggestion of a far off world.Only
to a patient and persevering purity will that light arise, and blessed
beyond all earthly blessedness is he who sees but the palest
shimmer of that transcendent radiance.
With such ideas as to “Spirit”, the horror with which
Theosophists shrink from ascribing the trivial phenomena of the
séance-room to “spirits” will be readily understood. Playing on
musical boxes, talking through trumpets, tapping people on the
head, carrying accordions round the room – these things may be all
very well for astrals, spooks and elementals, but who can assign
them to “spirits”, who has any conception of Spirit worthy of the
name? Such vulgarisation and degradation of the most sublime
conceptions as yet evolved by man are surely subjects for the
keenest regret, and it may well be hoped that ere long these
phenomena will be put in their true place, as evidence that the
materialistic [Page 63] views of the universe are inadequate,
instead of being exalted to a place they cannot fill as proofs of
Spirit. No physical, no intellectual phenomena are proofs of the
42
existence of Spirit. Only to the spirit can Spirit be demonstrated.
You cannot prove a proposition in Euclid to a dog; you cannot
prove Âtma-Buddhi to Kâma and the lower Manas. As we climb,
our view will widen, and when we stand on the summit of the Holy
Mount the planes of Spirit shall lie before our opened vision.[Page
64]
THE MONAD IN EVOLUTION
Perhaps a slightly more definite conception of AtmâBuddhi may be obtained by the student, if he considers its work in
evolution as the Monad. Now Atmâ-Buddhi is identical with the
universal Over-soul , "itself an aspect of the Unknown Root", the
One Existence. When manifestation begins the Monad is "thrown
downwards into matter", to propel forward and force evolution (See
Secret Doctrine, Volume 2, page 115); it is the mainspring, so to
speak, of all evolution, the impelling force at the root of all things.
All the principles we have been studying are mere "variously
differentiated aspects" of Atmâ, the One Reality manifesting in our
universe; it is in every atom, "the root of every atom individually
and of every form collectively", and all the principles are
fundamentally Atmâ on different planes. The stages of its evolution
are very clearly laid down in Five Years of Theosophy, pages 273 et
seq. There we are shown how it passes through the stages termed
elemental, "nascent centres of forces", and reaches the mineral
stage; from this it passes up through vegetable, animal, to man,
vivifying every form. As we are taught in the Secret Doctrine: "The
well-known Kabbalistic aphorism runs:
“A stone becomes a plant; the plant a
beast; the beast, a man; the man, a spirit; and the spirit,
a god.”
The ‘spark’ animates all the kingdoms in turn before it
enters into and informs divine man,[Page 65] between whom and
his predecessor, animal man, there is all the difference in the
world….The Monad…is first of all, shot down by the law of
evolution into the lowest form of matter – the mineral. After a
sevenfold gyration incased in the stone, or that which will become
mineral and stone in the Fourth Round, it creeps out of it, say as a
lichen. Passing thence, through all the forms of vegetable matter,
into what is termed animal matter, it has now reached the point in
43
which it has become the germ, so to speak, of the animal, that will
become the physical man” (Vol. I, pages 266-267).
It is the Monad, Âtma-Buddhi, that thus vivifies every
part and kingdom of nature, making all instinct with life and
consciousness, one throbbing whole. “Occultism does not accept
anything inorganic in the Kosmos. The expression employed by
science, ‘ inorganic substance,’ means simply that the latent life,
slumbering in the molecules of so-called ‘inert matter,’ is
incognisable. All is life and every atom of even mineral dust is a
life, though beyond our comprehension and perception, because it
is outside the range of the laws known to those who reject
Occultism “(Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, pages 268-69). And again:
“Everything in the universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is
conscious, i.e.., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and
on its own plane of perception. We men must remember that simply
because we do not perceive any signs of consciousness which we
can recognise, say in stones, we have no right to say that no
consciousness exists there. There is no such thing as either ‘dead’
or ‘blind’ matter, as there is no ‘blind’ or ‘unconscious’ law” (page
295). [Page 66]
How many of the great poets, with the sublime
intuition of genius, have sensed this great truth! To them all nature
pulses with life; they see life and love everywhere, in suns and
planets as in the grains of dust, in rustling leaves and opening
blossoms, in dancing gnats and gliding snakes. Each form
manifests as much of the One Life as it is capable of expressing,
and what is man that he should despise the more limited
manifestations, when he compares himself as a life-expression, not
with the forms below him, but with the possibilities of expression
that soar above him in infinite heights of being, which he can
estimate still less than the stone can estimate him?
The student will readily see that we must regard this
force at the centre of evolution as essentially one. There is but one
Âtma-Buddhi in our universe, the universal Soul, everywhere
present, immanent in all, the One Supreme Energy whereof all
varying energies or forces are only differing forms.As the sunbeam
is light or heat or electricity according to its conditioning
environment, so is Âtma all-energy, differentiating on different
planes. “As an abstraction, we will call it the One Life; as an
objective and evident reality, we speak of a septenary scale of
manifestation, which begins at the upper rung with the one
44
unknowable causality, and ends as Omnipresent Mind and Life
immanent in every atom of matter” (Secret Doctrine, Volume I,
page 163).
Its evolutionary course is very plainly outlined in a
quotation given in the Secret Doctrine, and as students are very
often puzzled over this unity of the Monad, I subjoin the statement.
The subject is difficult, but it could not, I think, be more clearly put
than it is in these sentences:- [Page 67]
“Now the monadic or cosmic essence (if such a term
be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable, and animal, though the
same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up
to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It
would be very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate entity
trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms,
and after incalculable series of transformations flowering into a
human being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to
the Monad of an atom of hornblende . Instead of saying a ‘Mineral
Monad,’ the more correct phraseology in physical science, which
differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it ‘the
Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the mineral
kingdom.’ The atom, as represented in the ordinary scientific
hypothesis, is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic
something, destined after aeons to blossom as a man. But it is a
concrete manifestation of the universal energy which itself has not
yet become individualised; a sequential manifestation of the one
universal Monad The ocean of matter does not divide into its
potential and constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse
reaches the stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation
into individual Monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes
almost to the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monad to the
whole Kosmos in the pantheistic sense; and the Occultists, while
accepting this thought for convenience sake, distinguish the
progressive stages of the evolution of the concrete from the abstract
by terms of which the ‘mineral, vegetable, animal, Monad,’ etc., are
examples. The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual
[Page 68] evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit.The
‘Monadic Essence’ begins imperfectly to differentiate towards
individual consciousness in the vegetable kingdom. As the Monads
are un-compounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is
the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees of
differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad – not the
45
atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance
through which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of
intelligence” (vol. I, p. 201).
The student who reads and weighs this passage will, at
the cost of a little present trouble, save himself from much
confusion in days to come. Let him first realise clearly that the
Monad – “the spiritual essence” to which alone in strict accuracy
the term Monad should be applied – is one all the universe over,
that Âtma-Buddhi is not his, nor mine, nor the property of anybody
in particular, but the spiritual essence energising in all. So is
electricity one all the world over; though it may be active in his
machine or in mine, neither he nor I can call it distinctly our
electricity. But – and here arise confusion – when Âtma-Buddhi
energises in man, in whom Manas is active as an individualising
force, it is often spoken of as though the “atomic aggregation” were
a separate Monad, and then we have “Monads,” as in the above
passage.This loose way of using the word will not lead to error if
the student will remember that the individualising process is not on
the spiritual plane, but Âtma-Buddhi as seen through Manas seems
to share in the individuality of the latter. So if you hold pieces of
variously coloured glass in your hand you may see through them a
red sun, a blue sun, a yellow sun, and so on. None the less there is
only [Page 69] the one sun shining down upon you, altered by the
media through which you look at it. So we often meet the phrase
“human Monads”; it should be “the Monad manifesting in the
human kingdom”; but this somewhat pedantic accuracy would be
likely only to puzzle a large number of people, and the looser
popular phrase will not mislead when the principle of the unity on
the spiritual plane is grasped, any more than we mislead by
speaking of the rising of the sun. “The Spiritual Monad is one,
universal, boundless, and impartite, whose rays, nevertheless, form
what we, in our ignorance, call the ‘ individual Monads’ of men”
(Secret
Doctrine,
Vol.
I
,p.
200).
Very beautifully and poetically is this unity in diversity put in one
of the Occult Catechisms in which the Guru questions the Chela:“Lift thy head, O Lanoo; dost thou see one
or countless lights above thee, burning in the dark
midnight sky?”
46
“I sense one Flame, O Gurudeva; I see
countless undetached sparks burning in it.”
“Thou sayest well. And now look around
and into thyself. That light which burns inside thee,
dost thou feel it different in any wise from the light that
shines in thy brother-men?”
“It is in no way different, though the
prisoner is held in bondage by Karma, and though its
outer garments delude the ignorant into saying, ‘thy
soul’ and ‘my soul’” (Secret Doctrine, vol., I, p.145).
There ought not to be any serious difficulty now in
grasping the stages of human evolution; the Monad, which has been
working its way as we have seen, reaches the point at which the
human form can be built up on [Page 70] earth; an etheric body and
its physical counterpart are then developed, Prâna specialised from
the great ocean of life, and Kâma evolved, all these principles, the
lower quaternary, being brooded over by the Monad, energised by
it, impelled by it, forced onward by it towards continually
increasing perfection of form and capacity for manifesting the
higher energies in Nature. This was animal, or physical man,
evolved through two and a half Races. But the Monad and the
lower quaternary could not come into sufficiently close relation
with each other; a link was yet wanting. “The Double Dragon [the
Monad] has no hold upon the mere form. It is like the breeze where
there is no tree or branch to receive and harbour it. It cannot affect
the form where there is no agent of transmission, and the form
knows it not” – (Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 60).Then, at the middle
point just reached, in the middle, that is, of the Third race, the
lower Mânasaputra stepped in to inhabit the dwellings thus
prepared for them, and to form the bridge between animal man and
the Spirit, between the evolved quaternary and the brooding ÂtmaBuddhi, to begin the long cycle of reincarnation which is to issue in
the perfect man.
The “monadic inflow,” or the evolution of the Monad,
from the animal into the human kingdom, continued through the
Third Race on to the middle of the Fourth, the human population
thus continually receiving fresh recruits, the birth of souls thus
continuing through the second half of the Third race and the first
47
half of the Fourth. After this, the “central turning point” of the
cycle of evolution, “no more Monads can enter the human
kingdom. The door is closed for this cycle” (Secret Doctrine, vol. I,
p. 205). Since then [Page 71] reincarnation has been the method of
evolution, this individual reincarnation of the immortal Thinker in
conjunction with Âtma-Buddhi replacing the collective indwelling
of Âtma-Buddhi in lower forms of matter.
According to Theosophical teachings, humanity has
now reached the Fifth Race, and we are in the fifth sub-race
thereof, mankind on this globe in the present stage having before it
the completion of the Fifth race, and the rise, maturity and decay of
the Sixth and Seventh Races. But during all the ages necessary for
this evolution, there is no increase in the total number of
reincarnating Egos; only a small proportion of these are
reincarnated at any special time on our globe, so that the population
may ebb and flow within very wide limits, and it will have been
noticed that there is a rush of birth after a local depopulation has
been caused by exceptional mortality. There is room and to spare
for all such fluctuations, having in view the difference between the
total number of reincarnating Egos and the number actually
incarnated at a given period.
LINES OF PROOF FOR AN UNTRAINED
ENQUIRER
It is natural and right that any thoughtful person
brought face to face with assertions such as those put forth in the
preceding pages, should demand what proof is forthcoming to
substantiate the propositions laid down. A reasonable person will
not demand full and complete proof available to all comers, without
study and without painstaking. He will admit that the advanced
theories of a science cannot be demonstrated to one ignorant of its
first principles, and he will be [Page 72] prepared to find that very
much will have been alleged which can only be proved to those
who have made some progress in their study. An essay on the
higher mathematics, on the correlation of forces, on the atomic
theory, on the molecular constitution of chemical compounds,
would contain many statements the proofs of which would only be
available for those who had devoted time and thought to the study
of the elements of the science concerned; and so an unprejudiced
person, confronted with the Theosophical view of the constitution
of man, would readily admit that he could not expect complete
48
demonstration until he had mastered the elements of the
Theosophical science.
None the less are there general proofs available in
every science which suffice to justify its existence and to encourage
study of its more recondite truths; and in Theosophy it is possible to
indicate lines of proof which can be followed by the untrained
enquirer, and which justify him in devoting time and pains to a
study which gives promise of a wider and deeper knowledge of
himself and of external nature than is otherwise attainable.
It is well to say at the outset that there is no proof
available to the average enquirer of the existence of the three higher
planes of which we have spoken. The realms of Spirit, and of the
higher mind are closed to all save those who have evolved the
faculties necessary for their investigation. Those who have evolved
these faculties need no proof of the existence of those realms; to
those who have not, no proof of their existence can be given. That
there is something above the astral and the lower levels of the
mental plane may indeed be proved by the flashes of genius, the
lofty intuitions, that from time to time lighten the darkness [Page
73] of our lower world; but what that something is, only those can
say whose inner eyes have been opened, who see where the race as
a whole is still blind. But the lower planes are susceptible to proof,
and fresh proofs are accumulating day be day. The Masters of
Wisdom are using the investigators and thinkers of the Western
world to make “discoveries” which tend to substantiate the outposts
of the Theosophical position, and the lines which they are
following are exactly those which are needed for the finding of
natural laws which will justify the assertions of Theosophists with
regard to the elementary “powers” and “phenomena” to which such
exaggerated importance has been given. If it is found that we have
undeniable facts which establish the existence of planes other than
the physical on which consciousness can work; which establish the
existence of senses and powers of perception other than those with
which we are familiar in daily life; which establish the existence of
powers of communication between intelligences without the use of
mechanical apparatus, surely, under these circumstances, the
Theosophist may claim that he has made out a prima facie case for
further investigation of his doctrines.
Let us then, confine ourselves to the lower planes of
which we have spoken in the preceding pages, and the four lower
principles in man which are correlated with these planes. Of these
49
four, we may dismiss one, that of Prâna, as none will challenge the
fact of the existence of the energy we call “life”; the need of
isolating it for purposes of study may be challenged, and in very
truth the plane of Prâna, or the principle of Prâna, runs through all
other planes, all other principles, interpenetrating all and binding all
in one. There [Page 74] remain for our study the physical plane, the
astral plane, the lower levels of the manasic plane. Can we
substantiate these by proofs which will be accepted by those who
are not yet Theosophists? I think we can.
First, as regards the physical plane. We need here to
notice how the senses of man are correlated with the physical
universe outside him, and how his knowledge of that universe is
bounded by the power of his organs of sense to vibrate in response
to vibrations set up outside him. He can hear when the air is thrown
into vibrations into which the drum of his ear can also be thrown; if
the vibration be so slow that the drum cannot vibrate in answer, the
person does not hear any sound; if the vibration be so rapid that the
drum cannot vibrate in answer, the person does not hear any sound.
So true is this, that the limit of hearing in different persons varies
with this power of vibration of the drums of their respective ears;
one person is plunged in silence, while another is deafened by the
keen shrilling that is throwing into tumult the air around both. The
same principle holds good for sight; we see so long as the light
waves are of a length to which our organs of sight can respond;
below and beyond this length we are in darkness, let the ether
vibrate as it may. The ant can see where we are blind, because its
eye can receive and respond to etheric vibrations more rapid than
we can sense.
All this suggests to any thoughtful person the idea that
if our senses could be evolved to more responsiveness, new
avenues of knowledge would be opened up even on the physical
plane; this realised, it is not difficult to go a step farther, and to
conceive that [Page 75] keener and subtler senses might exist
which would open up, as it were, a new universe on a plane other
than the physical.
Now this conception is true, and with the evolution of
the astral senses the astral plane unfolds itself, and may be studied
as really, as scientifically, as the physical universe can be. These
astral senses exist in all men, but are latent in most, and generally
need to be artificially forced, if they are to be used in the present
stage of evolution. In a few persons they are normally present and
50
become active without any artificial impulse. In very many persons
they can be artificially awakened and developed. The condition, in
all cases, of the activity of the astral senses is the passivity of the
physical, and the more complete passivity on the physical plane the
greater the possibility of activity on the astral.
It is noteworthy that Western psychologists have found
it necessary to investigate what is termed the “dream
consciousness”, in order to understand the workings of
consciousness as a whole. It is impossible to ignore the strange
phenomena which characterise the workings of consciousness when
it is removed from the limitations of the physical plane, and some
of the most able and advanced of our psychologists do not think
these workings to be in any way unworthy of the most careful and
scientific investigation. All such workings are, in Theosophical
language, on the astral plane, and the student who seeks for proof
there is an astral plane may here find enough and to spare. He will
speedily discover that the laws under which consciousness works
on the physical plane have no existence on the astral. E.g., the laws
of space and time, which are [Page 76] here the very conditions of
thought, do not exist for consciousness when its activity is
transferred to the astral world. Mozart hears a whole symphony as a
single impression, “as in a fine and strong dream” (Philosophy of
Mysticism, Du Prel, vol. I, p. 106), but has to work it out in
successive details when he brings it back with him to the physical
plane. The dream of the moment contains a mass of events that
would take years to pass in succession in our world of space and
time. The drowning man sees his life history in a few seconds. But
it is needless to multiply instances.
The astral plane may be reached in sleep or in trance,
natural or induced, i.e.., in any case in which the body is reduced to
a condition of lethargy. It is in trance that it can best be studied, and
here our enquirer will soon find proof that consciousness can work
apart from the physical organism, unfettered by the laws that bind it
while it works on the physical plane. Clairvoyance and
clairaudience are among the most interesting of the phenomena that
here
lie
for
investigation.
It is not necessary here to give a large number of cases of
clairvoyance, for I am supposing that the enquirer intends to study
for himself. But I may mention the case of Jane Rider, observed by
Dr. Belden, her medical attendant, a girl who could read and write
51
with her eyes carefully covered with wads of cotton wool, coming
down from to the middle of the cheek (Isis Revelata, vol. 1, page
37); of a clairvoyant observed by Schelling who announced the
death of a relative at a distance of 150 leagues, and stated that the
letter containing the news of the death was on its way (ibid., vol. 2,
pages 89-92); of Madame Lagrandré, who diagnosed [Page 77] the
internal state of her mother, giving a description that was proved to
be correct by the post-mortem examination (Somnolism and
Psychism, Dr. Haddock, pages 54-56); of Emma, Dr. Haddock’s
somnambule, who constantly diagnosed diseases for him (ibid.,
chap. 7). Speaking generally, the clairvoyant can see and describe
events which are taking place at a distance, or under circumstances
that render physical sight impossible. How is this done? The facts
are beyond dispute. They require explanation. We say that
consciousness can work through senses other than the physical,
senses unfettered by the limitations of space which exist for our
bodily senses, and cannot by them be transcended. Those who deny
the possibility of such working on what we call the astral plane
should at least endeavour to present a hypothesis more reasonable
than ours. Facts are stubborn things, and we have here a mass of
facts proving the existence of conscious activity on a superphysical
plane, of sight without eyes, hearing without ears, obtaining
knowledge without physical apparatus. In default of any other
explanation, the Theosophical hypothesis holds the field.
There is another class of facts: that of etheric and astral
appearances, whether of living or dead persons, wraiths,
apparitions, doubles, ghosts, etc., etc. Of course the omniscient
person of the end of the nineteenth century will sniff with lofty
disdain at the mention of such silly superstitions. But sniffs do not
abolish facts, and it is a question of evidence. The weight of
evidence is enormously on the side of such appearances, and in all
ages of the world human testimony has borne witness to their
reality. The enquirer whose demand for proof I have in view may
well set to work to gather [Page 78] first hand evidence on this
head. Of course if he is afraid of being laughed at he had better
leave the matter alone, but if he is robust enough to face the ridicule
of the superior person he will be amazed at the evidence which he
will collect from persons who have themselves come into contact
with astral forms. “Illusions! hallucinations! “ the superior person
will say. But calling names settles nothing. Illusions to which the
vast majority of the human race bears witness are at least worthy of
52
study, if human testimony is to be taken as of any worth. There
must be something which gives rise to this unanimity of testimony
in all ages of the world, testimony which is found today among
civilised people, amid railways and electric lights, as well as among
barbarous races.
The testimony of millions of Spiritualists to the reality
of etheric and astral forms cannot be left out of consideration.
When all cases of fraud and imposture are discounted there remain
phenomena that cannot be dismissed as fraudulent, and that can be
examined by any persons who care to give time and trouble to the
investigation. There is no necessity to employ a professional
medium; a few friends well know to each other, can carry on their
search together; and it is not too much to say that any half-dozen
persons, with a little patience and perseverance, may convince
themselves of the existence of forces and of intelligences other than
those of the physical plane. There is danger in this research to any
emotional, nervous, and easily influenced natures, and it is well not
to carry the investigations too far, for the reasons given on the
previous pages. But there is no readier way of breaking down the
unbelief in the existence of anything [Page 79] outside the physical
plane than trying a few experiments, and it is worth while to run
some risk in order to effect this breaking down.
These are but hints as to lines that the enquirer may
follow, so as to convince himself that there is a state of
consciousness such as we label “astral”. When he has collected
evidence enough to make such a state probable to him, it will be
time for him to be put in the way of serious study. For real
investigation of the astral plane, the student must develop in
himself the necessary senses, and to make his knowledge available
while he is in the body, he must learn to transfer his consciousness
to the astral plane without losing grip of the physical organism, so
that he may impress on the physical brain the knowledge acquired
during his astral voyagings. But for this he will need to be not a
mere enquirer but a student, and he will require the aid and
guidance of a teacher. As to finding that teacher, “when the pupil is
ready
the
teacher
is
always
there”.
Further proofs of the existence of the astral plane are, at the present
time, most easily found in the study of mesmeric and hypnotic
phenomena. And here, ere passing to these, I am bound to put in a
word of warning. The use of mesmerism and hypnotism is
53
surrounded by danger. The publicity which attends on all scientific
discoveries in the West has scattered broadcast knowledge which
places within the reach of the criminally disposed powers of the
most terrible character, which may be used for the most damnable
purposes. No good man or woman will use these powers, if he
finds that he possesses them, save when he utilises them purely for
human service, without personal end in view, and when he is very
sure that he is not by [Page 80] their means usurping control over
the will and the actions of another human being. Unhappily the use
of these forces is as open to the bad as to the good, and they may
be, and are being, used to most nefarious ends. In view of these
new dangers menacing individuals and society, each will do well to
strengthen the habits of self-control and of concentration of thought
and will, so as to encourage the positive mental attitude as opposed
to the negative, and thus to oppose a sustained resistance to all
influences coming from without. Our loose habits of thought, our
lack of distinct and conscious purpose, lay us open to the attacks of
the evil-minded hypnotiser, and that this is a real, not a fancied,
danger has been already proved by cases that have brought the
victims within grasp of the criminal law. It may be hoped that ere
long such hypnotic malpractices may be brought within the
criminal code.
While thus in the attitude of caution and of selfdefence, we may yet wisely study the experiments made public to
the world, in our search for preliminary proofs of the existence of
the astral plane. For here Western science is on the very verge of
discovering some of those “powers” of which Theosophists have
said so much, and we have the right to use in justification of our
teachings all the facts with which that science may supply us.
Now, one of the most important classes of these facts
is that of thoughts rendered visible as forms. A hypnotised person,
after being awakened from trance and being apparently in normal
possession of his senses, can be made to see any form conceived
by the hypnotiser. No word need be spoken, no touch given; it
suffices that the hypnotiser should clearly image to himself [Page
81] some idea, and that idea becomes a visible and tangible object
to the person under his control. This experiment may be tried in
various ways; while the patient is in trance, “suggestion” may be
used; that is, the operator may tell him that a bird is on his knee,
and on awaking from the trance he will see the bird and will stroke
it (Etudes Cliniques sur la Grande Hystérie, Richet, p. 645); or that
54
he has a lampshade between his hands, and on awaking he will
press his hands against it, feeling resistance in the empty air
(Animal Magnetism, translated from Binet and Féré, page 213);
scores of these experiments may be read in Richet or in Binet and
Féré. Similar results may be effected without “suggestion”, by pure
concentration of the thought; I have seen a patient thus made to
remove a ring from a person’s finger, without word spoken or
touch
passing
between
hypnotiser
and
hypnotised.
The literature of mesmerism and hypnotism in English, French, and
German is now very extensive, and it is open to every one. There
may be sought the evidence of this creation of forms by thought
and will, forms which, on the astral plane, are real and objective.
Mesmerism and hypnotism set the intelligence free on this plane,
and it works thereon without the hindrance normally imposed by
the physical apparatus; it can see and hear on that plane, and sees
thoughts as things. Here, again, for real study, it is necessary to
learn how thus to transfer the consciousness while retaining hold of
the physical organism; but for preliminary inquiry it suffices to
study others whose consciousness is artificially liberated without
their own volition. This reality of thought images on a
superphysical plane is a fact of the very highest importance,
especially in its bearing on [Page 82] reincarnation; but it is enough
here to point to it as one of the facts which go to show the prima
facie probability of the existence of such a plane.
Another class of facts deserving study is that which
includes the phenomena of thought-transference, and here we reach
the lower levels of the mental, or manasic, plane. The Transactions
of the Psychical Research Society contain a large number of
interesting experiments on this subject, and the possibility of the
transference of thought from brain to brain without the use of
words, or of any means of ordinary physical communication, is on
the verge of general acceptance. And two persons, gifted with
patience, may convince themselves of this possibility, if they care
to devote to the effort sufficient time and perseverance. Let them
agree to give, say, ten minutes daily to their experiment, and fixing
on the time, let each shut himself up alone, secure from interruption
of any kind. Let one be the thought projector, the other the thoughtreceiver, and it is safer to alternate these positions, in order to avoid
risk of one becoming permanently abnormally passive. Let the
thought projector concentrate himself on a definite thought and the
55
will to impress it on his friend; no other idea than the one must
enter his mind; his thought must be concentrated on the one thing,
“one–pointed” in the graphic language of Patanjali. The thoughtreceiver, on the other hand, must render his mind a blank, and must
merely note the thoughts that drift into it. These he should put
down as they appear, his only care being to remain passive, to
reject nothing, to encourage nothing. The thought-projector, on his
side, should keep a record of the ideas he tries to send, and at the
end of six months the two records should be [Page 83] compared.
Unless the persons are abnormally deficient in thought and will,
some power of communication will by that time have been
established between them: and if they are at all psychic they will
probably also have developed the power of see in each other in the
astral light.
It may be objected that such an experiment would be
wearisome and monotonous. Granted. All first hand investigations
into natural laws and forces are wearisome and monotonous. That
is why nearly every one prefers second-hand to first-hand
knowledge; the “sublime patience of the investigator” is one of the
rarest gifts. Darwin would perform an apparently trivial experiment
hundreds of times to substantiate one small fact . The
supersensuous domains certainly do not need for their conquest less
patience and less effort than the sensuous. Impatience never yet
accomplished anything in the questioning of nature, and the wouldbe student must, at the very outset, show the tireless perseverance
which can perish but cannot relinquish its hold.
Finally, let me advise the inquirer to keep his eyes
open for new discoveries, especially in the sciences of electricity,
physics, and chemistry. Let him read Professor Lodge’s address to
the British Association at Cardiff in the autumn of 1891 and
Professor Crookes’ address to the Society of Electrical Engineers in
London the following November. He will there find pregnant hints
of the lines along which Western science is preparing to advance,
and he will perchance begin to feel that there may be something in
H.P.Blavatsky’s statement that the Masters of Wisdom are
preparing to give proofs that will substantiate the Secret Doctrine.
[Page 84]
The Seven Planes and the principles functioning thereon
7 x
56
6
5
4
3
2
x
Atmâ. Spirit
Buddhi. Spiritual Soul
Manas. Human Soul.
Kâma. Astral or Desire-Body
Prâna. Etheric Double. Dense Physical
1
Body
Spiritual
Mental
Astral
Physical
[Page 85]
Another Division according to the Principles
7 Atmâ
6 Buddhi
5 Higher Manas
Principles
closely
4 Lower Manas
interwoven
during
earth life.
Sometimes
3 Kâma
called high
Psychic
Plane
2 Prâna. Etheric Double
1 Dense Physical Body
Spiritual
Mental
Astral
Physical
[Page 86]
Another Division also according the Principles
7 Atmâ
Spiritual
6 Buddhi
5 Manas
Mental
4 Kâma
Astral
3 Prâna
2 Etheric Double
Physical
1 Dense Physical Body
57
These two latter divisions are matters of convenience
in classification. The first diagram gives the planes themselves as
they exist in nature.
58